
























^ o 

Vv' -J V V 13^ ^ >5 

^ o a H / ' o ^ 

' * * ■'^ .>>> C « '^ ® « '■'b 0 ■' V 

-» ^ .J-^ ‘ '-5 c> J.' 


^D, ' .0'^ < ' y f, t ^ ^‘^ 

* Ve^ % 0^ ^■^Kvr%^''^^ vl"** ‘ 

’ xo 





>0^ ^o, ‘ 

>• <=: Cl O. yt 


<r 
•B 

* 4 

xV 

\ *‘0 ^ V. S^ '/y 

Z ^ f 

yP ^ 

A , 



o o 

<0 , - 0 <* V 

•S » V • B fi 










% ^ 




#' !^'' " ^ ''=b “ “ ' ' ° " 

,-t' • _^ . <' o 0 ^ t- . 

. ■< V^ 




* = ^ - 0,. % ^ • ' '“ V ' ■’ ^ ^ 

*<i '■ <siMw?^^ ^ ^ A*^ V- 






'" A^ ^n, 
^ AV 


A 






* -i) 








'X V 

o o' 


• <\ ^ 0 A ^ ft * s 

0 . . , 







^ O.V ''^t- 0 A 

* * ■ '“ V^ S-’ % * ’ "“ N> 

V>. \ ^ 7 A*-' ^ ^ S^,, 



<:> 


C 


0 


'"bo^ 




o .V, «5r 

° A o 







^ V 


■-^ O “ " a\\ 0 N C , ^ ' _Q’i^, ,v > » « 




^ 0 tt K 


-> .0^ » 




> _ ^ ^ 

^ " A 

A' » 

\a ■ %''^, 

y 


>/> rV» V ^ 

« O o' ^ 

-q5 '' %A\V^ 

C^. ^ ^ 

o ^ SI \ \ '^ \V 

,v v> ^ ... --^ 


r^ 





A...’. C'“'“v^."”‘.“^ 


iU.^. » ^0®^. ^ 

c^ 




N'^ 

, . -To ^ . . T ' T ^ ‘ , / 

^ ^ ^ <L ‘^r 

" A C.V - A#.A " ^P 

^ « ^\wW/T? ^ '\' 

- Z '■ 1 _ 


. V. ■»^'' A .. 



^ h O A 

T ■’"'’ V 



k? 'K<> <j 

< ' 0 ^ .V 

A ' « ^ ^<5. 


^ * ■) s 0 ’ .0- 




•^. .lA 























t 

* . . 


' i 


\ 


% 



* 


I 

t 


0 




I 







NAN SHERWOOD 

AT 

ROSE RANCH 


OR 

THE OLD MEXICAN’S TREASURE 

BY 

ANNIE ROE CARR 

Author of “Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp,” “Nan Sherwood’s 
Winter Holidays,” etc. 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW YORK 

GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY 


V 


BOOKS FOR GIRLS 


BY 

ANNIE ROE CARR 

THE NAN SHERWOOD SERIES 

NAN SHERWOOD AT PINE CAMP 

Or The Old Lumberman’s Secret 

NAN SHERWOOD AT LAKEVIEW 
HALL 

Or The Mystery of the Haunted Boathouse 

NAN SHERWOOD’S WINTER 
HOLIDAYS 

Or Rescuing the Runaways 

NAN SHERWOOD AT ROSE RANCH 

Or The Old Mexican’s Treasure 


GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY 

NEW YORK 


Copyright, 1919, by 
GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY 

NAN SHERWOOD AT ROSE RANCH 


JEjP 19 1919 


©CI.A530863 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I, School Reopens i 

II. Introductions lo 

III. “Curfew Shall Not Ring To- 

night” i8 

IV. Walking the Plank 27 

V. Rhoda Is Unpopular .... 34 

VI. The Mexican Girl 44 

VII. Down the Slope 51 

VIIL Afternoon Tea 60 

IX Not Always “Butterfingers” . 68 

X. The Treasure of Rose Ranch . 77 

XL Juanita 86 

XII. Rose Ranch at Last .... 94 

XIII. Open Spaces 107 

XIV. The Poor Little Calf . . . . 113 

XV. A Trophy for Room Eight . . 123 

XVI. Expectations 130 

XVII. The Round-Up 137 

XVIII. The Outlaw 147 

iii 


Contents 


XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 

XXII. 

XXIII. 

XXIV. 

XXV. 

XXVI. 

XXVII. 

XXVIII. 

XXIX. 

XXX. 


A Raid 

The Antelope Hunt; and More . 
In the Old Bear Den . . . . 

After the Tempest . ... . 

The Letter from Juanita . . . 

Uncertainties 

The Stampede 

Who Are They? 

The Funnel 

A Prisoner 

A Tamed Outlaw 

Treasure-Trove 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


The Slate-colored Cloud Seemed to Shut Out Every- 
thing Behind the Plying Wagons . Frontispiece 


Rhoda was Backing Away from a Girl with Up- 
lifted, Clenched Hand 85 


The Rose Ranch Outfit Showed the Visitors What 
a Real Cowboy Dance was Like . . . .128 


They Followed Rhoda Out and Up the Hillside , 212 


1 

I 




V 



" ■■ ' •- 

v' * . • » 


, 4 • t ■' . s 


, t • 


. '* 


<•' , ■ ' * 

'V ; •. > 




' 'V ■ , 

■ K ■ . / ’ .1 




/ - '{ 

». ■ rn ‘ 

\ 

t . 


V 


y ■ I 


' » I 


» • - 

> ■ 


■ 'VJ'- 

. ’ : : Jr 


x 




\ 


I 


f 


« 


I 






t ■' ■■ 



r 


\ 



V 


'f 



' •/ 




NAN SHERWOOD AT 
ROSE RANCH 


CHAPTER I 

SCHOOL REOPENS 

“And of course,” drawled Laura Polk, she of 
the irrepressible spirits and what Mrs. Cupp called 
“flamboyant” hair, “she will come riding up to the 
Hall on her trusty pinto pony (whatever kind of 
pony that is), with a gun at her belt and swinging 
a lariat. She will yell for Dr. Beulah to come forth, 
and the minute the darling appears this Rude 
Rhoda from the Rolling Prairie will proceed to 
rope our dear preceptress and bear her off captive 
to her lair ” 

“My — goodness — ^gracious — Agnes !” exclaimed 
Amelia Boggs, more frequently addressed as “Pro- 
crastination Boggs,” “you are getting your met- 
aphors dreadfully mixed. It is a four-legged beast 
of prey that bears its victim away to its ‘lair.’ ” 

“How do you know Rollicking Rhoda from 


I 


2 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

Crimson Gulch hasn’t four legs?” demanded the 
red-haired girl earnestly. “You know very well 
from what we see in the movies that there are more 
wonders in the ‘Wild and Woolly West’ than are 
dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio-Amelia” 

“One thing I say,” said a very much overdressed 
girl who had evidently just arrived, for she had not 
removed her furs and coat, and was warming her- 
self before the open fire in the beautiful reception 
hall where this conversation was going on, “I think 
Lakeview Hall is getting to be dreadfully common, 
when all sorts* and conditions of girls are allowed 
to come here.” 

“Oh, I guess this Rhododendron-girl from Dead 
Man’s Den has money enough to suit even you, 
Linda,” Laura Polk said carelessly. 

“Money isn’t everything, I hope,*' said the £^rl 
in furs, tossing her head. 

“Hear! Hear!” exclaimed Laura, and some of 
the other girls laughed. “Linda’s had a change of 
heart.” 

“Dear me!” sniffed Linda Riggs, “how smart you 
are, Polk. Just as though I was not used to any- 
thing but money ” 

“True. You are. But you have never talked 
about much of anything else before this particular 
occasion,” said the red-haired girl. “What has hap- 
pened to you, Linda mine, since you separated from 
us all at the beginning of the winter holidays?” 


School Reopens 3 

Linda merely sniffed again and turned to speak 
to her particular chum, Cora Courtney. 

“You should have been 'with me in Chicago, Cora 
— at my cousin. Pearl Graves’, house. I tried to 
get Pearl — she’s just about our age — to come to 
Lakeview Hall; but she goes to a private school 
right in her neighborhood — oh! a very select place. 
No girl like this wild Western person Polk is talk- 
ing about, would be received there. No, indeed!” 

“Hi, Linda !” broke in the irrepressible red-haired 
girl, “why didn’t you try to enter that wonderful 
school?” 

“I did ask to. But my father is s6 old-fash- 
ioned,” complained Linda. “He would not hear 
of it. Said it would not be treating Dr. Beulah 
right.” 

“Oh, oh !” groaned Laura. “How the dear doc- 
tor would have suffered, Linda,- if you had not 
come back to her sheltering arms.’^ 

The laugh this raised among the party made 
Linda’s cheeks flame more hotly than before. She 
would not look at the laughing group again, A 
flaxen-haired girl with pink cheeks and blue eyes 
■ — one of the smallest though not the youngest in 
the party — came timidly to Linda Riggs’ elbow. 

“Did you spend all your vacation in Chicago?” 
she asked gently. “I was to go to visit Grace; but 
there was sickness at home, and so I couldn’t. 
Didn’t the Masons come back with you, Linda?” 


4 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

“And Nan Sherwood and Bess Harley?” ques- 
tioned Amelia Boggs, the homely girl. “They went 
to the Masons’ to visit, didn’t they ?” 

“I’m sure I could not tell you much about them,’* 
Linda said, shrugging her shoulders. “I had some- 
thing else to do, I can assure you, than to look up 
Sherwood and Harley.” 

“Why!” gasped the fair-haired girl, “Grace wrote 
me that you werfe at her house, and went to the thea- 
ter with them, and that — that " 

“Well, what of it, Lillie Nevins?” demanded the 
other sharply. 

“In her letter she said you had a dreadful acci- 
dent. That you were run away with in a sleigh 
and that Nan Sherwood and Walter saved your 
life.” 

“That sounds interesting!” cried Laura Polk. 
“So Our Nan has been playing the he-ro-wine 
again? How did it happen?” 

“She has been putting herself forward the same 
as usual,” snapped Linda Riggs. “I suppose that 
is what you mean. And Grace is crazy. Walter 
did help me when Madam Graves’ horses ran away ; 
but Nan Sherwood had nothing to do with it. Or, 
nothing much, at least.” 

“Keep on,” said Laura Polk, dryly, “and I guess 
we’ll get the facts of the case.” 

“If you think I am going to join this crew that 


School Reopens 5 

praises Nan Sherwood to the skies, you are mis- 
taken,” cried Linda. 

“All right. We’ll hear all about it when Bess 
Harley comes,” said Laura, laughing. She did like 
to plague Linda Riggs. 

“Where are Nan and Bess, to say nothing of 
Gracie?” Amelia Boggs wanted to know. “You 
came on the last train, didn’t you, Linda?” 

“Oh, I did not pay much attention to those on 
the train,” said Linda airily. “Father had his pri- 
vate car put on for me, and I rode in that.” 

Mr. Riggs was president of the railroad, and by 
no chance did his daughter ever let her mates lose 
sight of that fact. 

“My goodness!” exclaimed Cora, “didn’t you 
have anybody with you?” 

“Well, no. You see, I invited Walter and Grace 
Mason, but they had people in the chair car they 
thought they must entertain,” and she sniffed again. 

“Oh, you Linda 1” laughed Laura. “I bet I know 
who they were entertaining.” 

“Here comes the bus !” cried Amelia suddenly. 

A rush of more than half the girls gathered 
about the open hearth for the great main entrance 
door of Lakeview Hall followed the announcement. 
This hall was almost like a castle set upon a high 
cliff overlooking Lake Huron on one side and the 
straggling town of Freeling, and Freeling Inlet, on 
the other. 


6 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 


The girls flung open the door. The school bus 
had just stopped before the wide veranda. Girls 
were fairly “boiling out of it,” as Laura declared. 
Short, tall, thin, stout girls and girls of all ages 
between ten and seventeen tramped merrily up the 
steps with their handbags. Such a hullabaloo of 
greeting as there was ! 

“Come on, Cora,” said Linda, haughtily. “Let 
us go up to our room. They are positively vulgar.” 

“Oh, no, Linda!” Cora cried. “I want to stay 
and see the fun.” 

“Fun!” gasped the disdainful Linda. 

“Yes,” said Cora, who was a terrible toady, but 
who showed some spirit on this occasion. “I want 
to have fun with the other girls. I don’t want to 
be left out of everything just because of you. Even 
if you are going to flock by yourself this term, as 
you did most of last, because you are all the time 
quarreling with the girls that have the nicest times, 
I’m going to get into the fun.” 

This, according to Linda Riggs' opinion, was 
crass ingratitude and treachery. Besides, she and 
Cora had the nicest room in the Hall, for it had 
been fixed up especially for his daughter by Mr. 
Riggs; and Cora, who was poor, was allowed to be 
Linda’s roommate without extra charge. 

“You mean that you want to run with that Nan 
Sherwood and Bess Harley crew !” exclaimed 
Linda. 


School Reopens 7 

“I want to get into some of the fun. And so do 
you, Linda! Don’t act offish,” and Cora walked 
toward the open door to meet the new arrivals. 

It was a terrible shock to the railroad magnate’s 
daughter — this. The defection of her chief hench- 
man and ally would rather break up the little group 
which Laura Polk had unkindly dubbed “the School 
of Snobs.” With all her wealth Linda had but few 
retainers. 

In the Van of the newcomers were & rather 
comely, brown-eyed girl with a bright and cheerful 
expression of countenance, a dark beauty with curls 
and flashing eyes, and a demure but pretty girl to 
whom Lillie Nevins ran with exclamations of joy. 
This last was Grace Mason, the flaxen-haired girl’s 
chum. 

“Oh, Nancy! how well you look,” cried Laura, 
hugging the brown-eyed girl. And to the curly- 
haired one: “What mischief have you got into, 
Bess? You look just as though you had done 
something.'^ 

“Don’t say a word!” gasped Bess Harley in the 
red-haired girl’s ear. “It’s what we are going to 
do. Some sawneys have arrived. We’ll have a 
procession.’* 

“Oh, say!” exclaimed Amelia Boggs, “there is 
one special sawney expected. Did she come on 
this train with you other girls ?” 

“Oh, that’s so ! Who has seen Roistering Rhoda 


8 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 


of the Staked Plains? Mrs. Cupp said she was 
due to-night,” cried Laura. 

“For goodness’ sake I” exclaimed Bess, “who is 
that?” 

“A sawney !” cried one of the other girls. 

“They say she is Rhoda Hammond, from the 
very farthest West there is,” Laura said gravely. 
“Of course she will ride in on a mustang, or some- 
thing like that.” 

“What! with the snow two feet deep?” laughed 
the brown-eyed girl, tossing off her furs and smil- 
ing at the group of her schoolmates with happy 
mien. 

“Say not so !” begged Laura. “No pony ? What 
is the use of having a cow-girl fresh from the 
wildest West come to Lakeview Hall unless she 
comes in proper character?” 

Nan Sherwood, having swept her old friends with 
her quick glance, now looked back at the group 
that had followed her into the hall. The bus had 
been so crowded and so dark that she had not known 
half of those who had been with her coming up 
from the Freeling railroad station. 

“How nice it is to get back, isn’t it?” she mur- 
mured to her special chum, Bess Harley. 

“I should say!” agreed Elizabeth, warmly and 
emphatically. 

Laura Polk, as an older girl and, after all, one 
of the most thoughtful, suddenly noticed a stranger 


School Reopens 9 

in brown who still stood just inside the door that 
somebody had thoughtfully closed. 

She made quite a charming, not to say striking, 
figure, as she stood there alone, just the faintest 
smile upon her lips, yet looking quite as neglected 
and lonely as any novice could possibly look. 

This stranger wore brown furs and a brown 
coat, with a hat to match on which was a really 
wonderful brown plume, She wore bronze shoes 
and hose. ' Even Linda Riggs was dressed no more 
richly than this girl; only the latter was dressed in 
better taste than Linda. 

Laura, leaving the gay company, went quickly 
toward the girl in brown and held out her hand. 

“I am sure you are a stranger here,” she said. 
“And I am a member of the Welcoming Commit- 
tee. I am Laura Polk. And you ?” 

“I am Rhoda Hammond,” said the demure girl 
quietly. 

“What!” almost shouted the startled Laura. 
“You’re never! You can’t be! Not Rollicking 
Rhoda from Rustlers’ Roost, the wild Western ad- 
venturess we’ve heard so much about ?” 

“No,” said the girl in brown, still placidly. “I 
am Rhoda Hammond from Rose Ranch.” 


CHAPTER II 


INTRODUCTIONS 

“Oh, my auntie!” tnurmured Amelia Boggs, us- 
ing most uncommendable slang. “Stung!” 

But Laura Polk, if inclined to be boisterous and 
rather rude in her jokes, was by no means petty. 
She burst into such a good-natured and disarming 
laugh that the girl in brown was forced to join her. 

“There, Laura,” said Bess Harley, “the biter for 
once is the bitten. I hope you are properly over- 
come.” 

Nan Sherwood likewise hastened to offer the new 
girl her hand 

“I am glad to greet you, Rhoda Hammond,” she 
said sympathetically. “You must not mind our 
animal spirits. We just do slop over at this time, 
my dear. Wait till you see how gentle and decorous 
we have to be after the semester really begins. This 
is only letting off steam, you know.” 

“Do you meet all newcomers with the same grade 
of hospitality?” asked Rhoda Hammond, with more 
than a little sarcasm in both her words and tone. 

“Only more so,” Bess Harley assured her. “Oh, 


10 


Introductions 


;ir 


Nan! consider what they did to us when we came 
here for the first time last September. ’Member?” 

Nan nodded with sudden gravity in her pretty 
face. She was not likely to forget that trying time. 
She had been on a very different footing with her 
schoolmates for the first few weeks of her life at 
Lakeview Hall than she was now. 

Rhoda Hammond, the new girl, seemed to ap- 
prehend something of this change, for she said 
quickly and with much good sense : 

“Well, if you two could stand it, and are evi- 
dently so much thought of now. I’ll grin and bear 
it, too. Though it isn’t just as we are taught to 
treat strangers out home. At Rose Ranch if a per- 
son is a tenderfoot we try to make it particularly 
easy for him.” 

“Oh, my dear,” drawled Bess, her eyes dancing, 
“it works just the opposite at a girls’ boarding 
school, believe me !” 

Her chum. Nan, was for the moment not in a 
laughing mood. She could scarcely realize now 
that she was the same Nan Sherwood who had come 
so wonderingly and timidly to Lakeview Hall. 

Of the Sherwoods there were only Nan and 
her father and mother. They were an especially 
warmly attached trio and probably, if a most won- 
derful and startling thing had not happened. Nan 
and Momsey and Papa Sherwood would never have 
been separated, or been fairly shaken out of their 


12 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

family existence, as they had been just about a 
year before this present story opens. 

The Sherwoods lived in a little cottage on Amity 
Street in Tillbury. Bess Harley lived with her par- 
ents and brothers and sisters in the same town ; but 
they were much better off financially than the Sher- 
woods. Mr, Sherwood was a foreman in the At- 
water Mills, and when that company abruptly 
closed down. Nan’s father was thrown out of work 
and the prospect of real poverty stared the Sher- 
woods in the face. 

Then the unexpected happened. A distant rela- 
tive of Mrs. Sherwood’s died, leaving her some 
property in Scotland. But it was necessary for her 
to appear personally before the Scotch courts to 
obtain Hughie Blake’s fortune. 

Circumstances were such, however, that her par- 
ents could not take Nan with them. It was a hard 
blow to the girl; but she v^as plucky and ready to 
accept the determination of Momsey and Papa Sher- 
wood. When they started for Scotland, Nan 
started for Pine Camp with her Uncle Henry, and 
the first book of this series relates for the most part 
Nan’s exciting adventures in the lumber region of 
the Michigan Peninsula, under the title of : “Nan 
Sherwood at Pine Camp; Or, the Old Lumberman’s 
Secret.” 

As has been mentioned. Nan and her chum, Bess 
Harley, had come to Lakeview Hall the previous 


Introductions 


13 

September. The matter of Momsey’s fortune had 
not then been settled in the Scotch courts; but 
enough money had been advanced to make it pos- 
sible for Nan to accompany her chum to the very 
good boarding school on the shore of Lake Huron. 

In “Nan Sherwood at Lakeview Hall; Or, the 
Mystery of the Haunted Boathouse,” the two 
friends are first introduced to boarding-school life, 
and to this very merry, if somewhat thoughtless, 
company of girls that have already been brought 
to the attention of the reader in our present vol- 
ume. 

They were for the most part nice girls and, at 
heart, kindly intentioned ; but Nan had gone through 
some harsh experiences, as well as exciting times, 
during the fall and winter semester at Lakeview 
Hall. She had made friends, as she always did; 
and the Masons, Grace and Walter, determined to 
have her with them in Chicago over the holidays. 
Therefore, in the third volume of the series, “Nan 
Sherwood’s Winter Holidays; Or, Rescuing the 
Runaways,” we find Nan and her chum with their 
friends in the great city of the Lakes. 

During those two weeks of absence from school 
Nan certainly had experienced some exciting times. 
Included in her adventures were her experiences in 
rescuing two foolish country girls who had run 
away to be motion picture actresses. In addition 
Nan Sherwood had saved little Inez, a street child, 


14 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

and had taken her back to “the little dwelling in 
amity,” as Papa Sherwood called their Tillbury 
home. For Nan’s parents had returned from across 
the seas, and she was beginning this second semes- 
ter at Lakeview Hall in a much happier state of 
mind in every way than she had begun the first 
one. 

It was only to be expected that Nan would try 
to make the coming of the girl in brown, Rhoda 
Hammond, more pleasant than her own first ap- 
pearance at school had been. 

But the girls who had remained at the Hall over 
the holidays were fairly wild. At least, Mrs. Cupp 
said so, and Mrs. Cupp, Doctor Beulah Prescott’s 
housekeeper, ought to know for she had had com- 
plete charge of the crowd during the intermission 
of studies. 

“And, believe me,” sighed Laura Polk, “we’ve 
led the dear some dance.” 

Mrs. Cupp looked very stern now as she sud- 
denly appeared from her office at the end of the 
big hall. She scarcely responded to the greetings 
of the girls who had returned — not even to Nan’s 
— ^but asked in a most forbidding tone: 

“Who is there new ? Girls who have for the first 
time arrived, come into my office at once. There 
is time for the usual formalities before supper.” 

“Oh, my dear,” murmured Bess Harley wickedly, 
and loud enough for the girl in brown to hear her, 


Introductions 


15 

“she is in a dreadful temper. She certainly will 
put these poor sawneys through the wringer to- 
night.” 

Rhoda Hammond evidently took this “with a 
grain of salt.” She asked, before going to the of- 
fice: 

“What sort of instrument of torture is the 
‘wringer,’ please?” 

“I am speaking in metaphor,” explained Bess. 
“But you waitl She will wring tears from your 
eyes before she gets through with you. As the lit- 
tle girls say, you can see her ‘mad is up.’ ” 

“Oh, now, Elizabeth,” warned Nan, “don’t scare 
her.” 

Rhoda walked away without another word. Bess 
looked after her with an admiring light in her eyes. 

“Oh, Nan! isn’t she beautifully dressed?” 

“Richly dressed, I agree,” said Nan. “But Mrs. 
Cupp will have something to say about that.” 

“I know,” giggled the wicked and slangy Bess. 
“She’ll give her an earful about dressing ‘out of 
order.’ She is worse than Linda.” 

“No. Better,” said Nan confidently. “Whoever 
chose that girl’s outfit showed beautiful taste, even 
if she is dressed much too richly for the standard 
of Lakeview Hall.” 

Linking arms a little later, when the supper gong 
sounded, the two friends from Tillbury sought the 
pleasant dining-room where the whole school — 


1 6 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

“primes” as well as the four upper divisions — ate 
at long tables, with an instructor in charge of each 
division. 

But discipline was relaxed to-night, as it was al- 
ways at such times. Even Mrs. Cupp, who, all 
through the meal, marched up and down the room 
with a hawk eye on everything and everybody, was 
less strict than ordinarily. 

The moment Nan Sherwood appeared the little 
girls hailed her as their chum and “Big Sister.” 
Nothing would do but she must sit at their table and 
share their food for this one meal. 

“Oh, dear. Nan!” cried one little miss, “did you 
bring back Beautiful Beulah all safe and sound with 
you? Shall we have her to play with again this 
term ?” 

“Why, bless you, honey!” returned the bigger 
girl, “I did not even take the doll away. Mrs. 
Cupp has charge of it, and if she lets me, we will 
take it up into Room Seven, Corridor Four, to- 
morrow.” 

“Oh, won’t that be nice?” acclaimed the little 
girls, for Nan’s big doll was an institution at Lake- 
view Hall among more than the children in the 
primary department. 

But at the end of the meal Nan was dragged away 
by the older girls. They were an excited and hi- 
larious crowd. 

“There’s something doing!” whispered Bess in 


Introductions 


17 

Nan’s ear. “That new girl is on our corridor. You 
know the room that was shut up all last term?’’ 

“Number eight?” 

“That is the one. Rhoda has got it. And what 
do you think?” 

“Almost any mischief,” replied Nan, with danc- 
ing eyes. 

“Oh, now. Nan! Well, Laura has told her that 
the room is haunted. Says a girl died there two 
years ago and it’s never been used since. And so 
now her ghost will be sure to haunt it ” 

“I think that is both mean and silly of Laura,” 
interrupted Nan, with vigor. “She will have some 
of these little girls, who will be bound to hear the 
tale, scared half to death. Is that poor girl going 
to live in Number Eight alone?” 

“She is until somebody else comes to mate with 
her,” said Bess carelessly. “Come on, old Poky. 
We’re going to have some fun with that wild West- 
erner.” 

“I’ll go along,” agreed Nan, smiling again, “if 
only to make sure that you crazy ones do not go too 
far in your hazing.” 


CHAPTER III 


“CXJRFEW SHALL NOT RING TO-NIGHX” 

In Corridor Four had always been centered most 
of Lakeview Hall’s “high jinks,” to quote Laura 
Polk. Although Procrastination Boggs, Nan Sher- 
wood, Bess Harley, and several other dwellers on 
this corridor stood well up in their classes, Mrs. 
Cupp was inclined to locate most infractions of the 
school rules in the confines of Corridor Four. 

“Our overflowing an-i-mile spirits, young ladies, 
are our bane,” quoted Laura, talking through her 
nose. “Dr. Beulah has been away — ^has not arrived 
home yet — and we unfortunate orphans have been 
driven to bed with the chickens. I, for one, have 
revolted.” 

“You don’t look very revolting, Laura,” drawled 
Amelia Boggs, “even with that red necktie on 
crooked.” 

“Just the same, I have anarchistic tendencies. I 
feel ’em,” declared the red-haired girl. 

“That is not anarchism you feel,” scoffed Bess. 
“If I had eaten what you did for supper " 

“Oh, say not so!” begged Laura. “Don’t tell 

I8 


“Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night” 19 


me that all this disturbance within me is from 
merely what I ate. Why, I feel that I might lead 
an assault on Cupp’s office, take her by force, and 
immure her in ” 

“The old secret passage to the boathouse,” put 
in Nan. 

“Oh, goodness — gracious — ^Agnesi” said Amelia, 
looking at one of her watches, “if we are going to 
do anything to that wild Western mustang to- 
night ” 

“Hush I Have no fear,” interrupted Laura. 
“There is time enough.” 

“Procrastination should know that,” giggled 
Bess, “with all the watches and clocks she owns.” 

“While we gab here,” went on Amelia, “curfew 
time approaches.” 

Laura struck an attitude. “Listen, girls!” she 
cried. “ ‘Curfew shall not ring to-night !’ ” 

“Now, don’t begin reciting old chestnuts like 
that,” sniffed Bess. 

“It is an announcement of revolt, not a recita- 
tion, I’d have you know,” declared the red-haired 
girl. 

“What do you mean, Laura?” Nan asked, sud- 
denly seeing that Laura really had some meaning 
underneath her raillery. 

“Hush, children!” crooned the red-haired girl. 
“What is our greatest trial — our most implacable 


20 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 


enemy — in this fair Garden of Eves? Tell me!” 

“Mrs. Cupp,” sighed Nan. 

“Nay, nay! She is but the slave of the lamp,” 
responded Laura, still in flowery fashion. “The 
bete noire of the girls of Lakeview Hall is the half- 
past nine o’clock curfew. And I vow it shall not 
ring to-night!” 

“Why won’t it?” asked Nan, finally grown sus- 
picious. 

“Because,” hissed Laura, her eyes dancing, “I 
climbed up into the tower this forenoon and un- 
hooked and hid the bell-clapper. They won’t find 
it for one while, now you mark my word!” 

“Oh, Laura!” gasped Nan; but then she, too, 
had to join in the peal of laughter that the other 
girls in Room Seven, Corridor Four, emitted. 

“What a joke!” exclaimed Bess. 

“It’s one of those jokes best kept secret,” advised 
Amelia Boggs, who, after all, possessed a fund of 
caution. “Mrs. Cupp will be desperately moved 
when she finds it out.” 

“At least,” Nan agreed, “Laura is right. Cur- 
few will not ring to-night. But Mrs. Cupp will 
find some other way of making it known that re- 
tiring hour has arrived. We’d best get to work if 
we are going to have a procession of the sawneys.” 

“Girls,” suddenly asked Bess, “who ever started 
that lumberman’s slang of ‘sawney’ for ‘green- 
horn’ up in this hall of acquired good English?” 


“Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night” 21 


“Oh, come, Bess!” groaned Amelia, “the term 
hasn’t really opened yet. Don’t make us delve into 
the past for the roots of our language. It’s us 
for the procession now 1” 

Nan Sherwood entered into the plan for the eve- 
ning’s hazing of newcomers for a special reason. 
She had liked the girl from the West, Rhoda Ham- 
mond, at first sight. Not for her beautiful cloth- 
ing, but for something Nan had seen in h?r coun- 
tenance. 

The former purposed to take an active part in 
whatever was done to the newcomer because she 
believed she could influence the more thoughtless 
girls to the extent that nothing very harsh would 
be done to Rhoda. 

“I’ll stir up the animals,” cried Bess, hopping off 
her bed, where she had been perching. “We want 
a big crowd to help worry that Hammond girl.” 

She was gone in a flash to get together the other 
girls of Corridor Four. Laura yawned: 

“I wonder if we’ll be able to worry that wild 
Western young person much, after all?” she said. 
“She looked to me like a cool sort of person.” 

“I don’t know,” said Amelia. “I think she’s 
stuck up.” 

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” cried Nan. 

“She’s dressed to kill, just the same. I’d like to 
take her for a good long tramp in that outfit she 
came in.” 


22 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 


“Procrastination means this Riotous Rhoda has 
got too much money — like Linda Riggs,” put in 
Laura. 

“I wonder if that Rose Ranch she comes from 
is a nice place,” said Nan. “Just think! A real 
cattle ranch!” 

“Pooh !” said Amelia. “My uncle owns a dairy 
farm. What’s the difference whether you have 
muley cows or long-homed Texas steers?” 

Laura was still chuckling at this when Bess re- 
turned with several girls who crowded into the 
room behind her. There was a busy time for a 
few minutes as the girls dressed Amelia in an old 
pillow-slip with eye-holes burned in it, and placed 
in her hand the staff of a broom, over the brush- 
end of which was drawn another bag, on which, in 
charcoal, Grace Mason deftly drew a very wise 
looking owl in outline. 

Thus arrayed, Amelia was to lead the procession 
and be Mistress of Ceremonies. They were about 
to start when Laura Polk was suddenly missed. 

“Now, where has she gone?” demanded Bess. 
“She’s just like a flea! You put your hand on her, 
and there she isn’t !” 

But Laura was back in a moment. She brougfht 
with her, and dangled before their wondering gaze, 
a suit of paint-stained overalls, jumper and all, 
that evidently by their size belonged to Henry, the 
boatkeeper and man of all work of Lakeview Hall. 


“Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night” 23 

“I hid ’em the other day,” declared the red- 
haired girl. “You never know what may happen, 
or how such garments as these may come in use.” 

“But, for pity’s sake, Laura!” gasped Nan, “what 
are they for?” 

“Don’t they make just the uniform needed for a 
cowgirl? What say? I bet she rides astride, and 
these old overalls will remind her of home, at Rus- 
tlers’ Roost, and all that, you know.” 

The shrieks of laughter that answered this pro- 
posal threatened to bring some of the teachers and 
so spoil the fun altogether. Finally, however, 
Amelia Boggs got the crowd into line, and the pa- 
rade marched out of Room Seven into the corridor. 

Room Eight was almost directly opposite the one 
occupied by Nan and Bess ; but Amelia led the pro- 
cession the full length of the hall and returned 
again before rapping a summons on Rhoda Ham- 
mond’s door. 

“Oh, yes! In a minute,” cried a small voice 
from inside. 

But Amelia waited on no appeal of this char- 
acter. She found on turning the knob that the 
door was unlocked. She flung it open and stalked 
in, the other girls trailing two by two behind her. 

“Oh, dear me! what do you want?” gasped 
Rhoda. 

She had removed and hung up in the clothes- 
closet the beautiful furs, dress, and hat. Her bag 


24 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

was open on the couch, but it seemed to contain no 
kimono, and the Western girl remained half hidden 
behind the portiere that hung before the closet. 

“What do you want?” she repeated, gazing in 
wonder at the tall figure of the Mistress of Cere- 
monies. 

“We are just in time,” said Amelia behind her 
mask, and in a supposed-to-be-sepulchral voice. 
“The sawney is all prepared to don her costume. 
Hither, slave! and see that she dons the costume 
quickly, for we must haste.” 

“The slave hithers,” said Laura jovially. “Here 
you are, Rambunctious Rhoda from Rawhide 
Springs. Put ’em on.” 

She held out the overalls and jumper to the sur- 
prised new girl, who hesitated to take them. 

“Hie jacet! The varlet refuses ’em!” hissed the 
red-haired girl. 

“Goodness, Laura,” whispered Nan. “That 
means ‘here lies’ — and nobody is telling stories.” 

“She’s got her Latin and Shakesperean English 
most awfully mixed,” giggled one of the other girls. 

“And ‘varlet’ is the wrong gender, anyway,” ob- 
served Bess. 

“Silence!” commanded the Mistress of Ceremo- 
nies. “Silence in the ranks. Will she not don the 
costume ?” 

“Put ’em on!” commanded Laura again, shak- 


^‘Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night” 25 

ing the painter’s suit before the hesitating West- 
ern girl. 

“She would better,” said Amelia threateningly, 
“or I will call to your aid all these, my faithful fol- 
lowers, who have already been through the fiery 
trial.” 

“I don’t want to go through any fiery trial,” said 
Rhoda. “But if you insist. I’ll put on that jacket 
and the pants.” 

“ ‘Pants’ is truly Western, isn’t it, Laura?” asked 
Amelia Boggs. “Civilized folk say trousers.” 

“I see I have much to learn,” said Rhoda, too 
meekly, perhaps. 

She slipped quickly into the roomy overalls be- 
hind the curtain, and then came forth, putting on the 
jumper. Her bare arms and shoulders were brown 
and firm. Nan thought Rhoda’s figure was as at- 
tractive as her face was pretty. She caught the 
new girl’s glance and smiled encouragingly. 

“Doesn’t she make a darling boy!” whispered 
Bess Harley to her chum. 

But the other girls — at least, some of them — 
meant to make the newcomer feel keenly her posi- 
tion as a “sawney.” 

“She wears ’em just as though she was at home 
in them,” said Laura drawlingly. “I tell you she is 
a regular cowgirl at home on the Hot Dog Mesa. 
Isn’t that so, Miss Rhoda?” 


26 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 


“You seem to know,” replied the Western girl 
bruskly. 

Laura suddenly whispered to the hooded Amelia. 
The latter cleared her throat portentously and said : 

“Sawney, it is evident that you must be taught 
your place. Meekness becomes you lambkins when 
you first come to Lakeview Hall. Slave, prepare 
the bandage.” 

“What’s that?” demanded Rhoda. “Do you 
know, I don’t like this foolishness much.” 

“The fiery trial all right for yours!” exclaimed 
Laura, who had caught up a towel and was folding 
it dexterously. “Turn around I” 

“I won’t!” declared Rhoda flatly. 

“Mutiny!” exclaimed Amelia. “Seize the cap- 
tive and bandage her eyes at once,” and she pounded 
on the floor with the broom handle. 

Nan was one of those who grabbed the Western 
girl. But she did so to whisper swiftly in Rhoda’s 
ear: 

“Don’t fight against it. It’s only fun.” 

“Fun!” repeated Rhoda in disgust. 

But she gave over struggling. Laura blind- 
folded her quickly and securely. Of course she 
might have torn the bandage off, for her hands were 
free. But she waited more calmly now for what 
might come next. 


CHAPTER IV! 


WALKING THE PLANK 

Nan Sherwood knew very well that there was 
no intention of really injuring the new girl; there- 
fore she made no objection to what was done. In- 
deed, she helped haze Rhoda Hammond, but more 
for the sake of seeing that the Western girl was not 
taken advantage of in any way than for the fun of 
the prank. 

Nan did not know what Amelia and Laura had 
planned to do to the new girl, but knowing the 
older girls as well as she did, she was sure that 
nothing very bad was intended. 

Somebody found an old striped silk parasol with 
some of the panels split, and this was opened and 
given to Rhoda to carry. The line of march was 
then taken up, with the victim directly behind the 
Mistress of Ceremonies and Laura and Nan shut- 
ting off all chance of Rhoda’s escape. 

The latter’s cheeks were very red and her teeth 
gripped her lower lip tightly. Bess mentioned, gig- 
gling, that Rhoda looked already as though she 
were going through the fiery trial ! 

27 


28 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 


Nan realized it would have gone much better 
for the Western girl if she had taken it smiling. 
She feared that Rhoda’s attitude would make the 
hazing more severe and more prolonged. She 
wished she knew what was in the minds of Laura 
and Amelia Boggs regarding the new girl. 

The procession marched through Corridor Four 
to the rear stairway. Amelia stalked ahead, car- 
rying the broom, her “wand of office.” The stair- 
way led threateningly near to Mrs. Cupp’s room. 

“Don’t dare breathe even, while we are going 
down,” hissed Laura. 

“Silence !” reiterated Amelia. 

They descended carefully — all but the prisoner. 
But when she made too much noise Laura poked her. 

“Herel” the red-haired girl muttered, “make be- 
lieve you are stealing upon a band of Indians to 
scalp ’em — the poor things ! You don’t walk like a 
prairie rose. You stamp along more like a charg- 
ing buffalo.” 

“Goodness!” sighed Lillie Nevins, in the rear, 
“how much our Laura knows about the West, 
doesn’t she?” 

At the titter which followed this remark, their 
leader hissed for silence again. The procession 
was now winding down the stairway to the rear of 
Mrs. Cupp’s office. They were bound for the base- 
ment, it seemed. 

For a moment Nan Sherwood wondered if the 


Walking the Plank 29 

older girls intended to reach the subterranean pass- 
age which connected the trunk room with the boat- 
house at the foot of the cliff. Then she remembered 
that the trunk room would be locked at this hour 
and that Mrs. Cupp had the key. 

But the gymnasium was down here, too. The 
cellars under the school were enormous. Castle- 
like, the great, rambling building had been con- 
structed by a man with more imagination than 
money. The latter ran out before his castle on the 
cliff was completed. After years Of emptiness. 
Dr. Beulah Prescott had obtained it and made it 
into what it now was — a school for girls. 

The great gymnasium was not locked. Laura 
ran quickly when they entered the dusky place, and 
punched the light buttons. 

“What do you suppose Mrs. Gleason will say?” 
whispered Grace Mason. Mrs. Gleason was the 
athletic instructor. 

“She won’t say a thing if she doesn’t know,” 
declared Bess promptly. 

Some one closed the door, and Nan saw then that 
there were at least twenty girls in the room. Some 
had joined the procession from other corridors. 
Now they all began to gabble at once, and Amelia 
pounded frantically for order. 

Nan saw that the bandage was sufficiently tight 
across Rhoda’s eyes. Then she led her into the 
middle of the great room. Amelia was beckoning. 


30 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

There had been repairs going on in the gym- 
nasium during the holidays, and a good deal of 
the paraphernalia had been disarranged. It was 
evident, too, that the workmen were not entirely 
through. A long plank, used by the men as a 
Scaffolding, stretched from one set of horizontal 
bars to another on the platform at one end of the 
room. 

Laura called the other girls and in whispers 
directed them to gather all the mattresses and pile 
them on the platform under the somewhat inse- 
cure plank. Amelia, her eyes sparkling through the 
holes in the pillow-slip, held Nan and the prisoner 
back. 

“Sawney,” the tall girl said sternly, “as you have 
filed objections to being tried by fire according to 
the ancient and honorable custom of Lakeview 
lambkins, you shall be treated as a robber — No! A 
pirate. You shall be made to walk the plank.” 

“Well,” said Rhoda, rather scornfully. She did 
not see anything funny in all this. 

“It will be a pretty deep well you will plop into,” 
threatened Amelia. “Ready, slaves?” 

“Your slaves are slavishly ready,” called Laura 
from the platform. “Let the sawney climb the 
ship’s taffrail and be plunged into the sea.” 

“We ought to tie her hands behind her,” said one 
girl, as they marched down the room. 

“No,” said Nan. 


Walking the Plank 31' 

“That is right,” said Amelia, “We must give 
her a chance to swim when she strikes the water.” 

“Oh, fiddlesticks !” murmured Rhoda. 

But Nan saw Laura run and fill a big dipper with 
water from the spigot and give it to one of the 
other girls, who climbed quickly to the platform. 
Then Laura came to seize the victim’s other arm. 
She and Nan marched Rhoda, willy-nilly, down 
the room and up the steps to the platform, 

Rhoda stumbled on each step and held her head 
down. Nan, therefore, judged that Rhoda could 
see a little from under the bandage. But she did 
not call Laura’s attention to this fact. 

“Mount her quickly, slaves !” called Amelia from 
below. “Force her to walk the plank instantly!” 

There had been a stepladder set up against the 
first horizontal bar set, right at the end of the 
plank. Nan saw that the mattresses were all in 
place and that a fall from the plank would only be 
about three feet. Such a fall was not likely to be 
serious, and to girls used to athletic drill it seemed 
a mere nothing. And yet — ^ — 

“Come on!” commanded Laura, half lifting 
Rhoda up the stepladder. 

“Careful, Laura!” whispered Nan, “If she 
should fall ” 

“Then she will escape drowning,” said the red- 
haired girl, coolly and aloud. 


32 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

“Fudge I” muttered the victim, who seemed in a 
very much disgusted mood. 

“Beseemeth the candidate is not sufficiently im- 
pressed by her situation,” hissed Laura. 

She and Nan had scrambled up the steps with the 
blindfolded Rhoda. There was a cross-plank 
which gave the three uncertain footing. 

“Oh, look out!” gasped Nan, wavering herself 
upon the edge of the plank. 

“Hey ! We don’t want to have to raise the ‘man 
overboard’ cry just yet,” grumbled Laura. “Easy 
there, Nancy 1” 

Nan whispered in Rhoda’s ear: “Walk straight 
ahead. It isn’t hard. I’ll be ready to catch you.” 

“Out on the plank, sawney !” commanded Amelia 
from below. 

Laura pushed Rhoda ahead. The candidate for 
initiation, even if she could see a little from under 
the bandage, had at best a very uncertain idea of 
where she was, or where she was going. Besides, 
with one’s eyes practically blinded, it is very dif- 
ficult indeed to walk a chalk line, even on the floor. 
And this plank that was far from steady was only 
about a foot in width. 

“Oh!” ejaculated Rhoda, one foot before the 
other and her arms waving for a balance. The 
parasol did not help much. 

“Oh! oh! oh!” was the prolonged wail from the 
crowd below. 


Walking the Plank 33 

“You — think — ^you’re — so — smart!” Again the 
Western girl teetered back and forth. Laura gave 
her another slight push. Rhoda took one more 
step, and let the parasol fall. 

“Good!” encouraged Nan. 

“Treason!” croaked Laura, observing Nan’s en- 
couragement of the candidate. 

“Have a care, sawney,” declared Amelia Boggs 
sternly. “A false step and you are lost! The 
ravening sea is below you. Feel the spray dashing 
in your face!” 

Quick as a flash the girl with the dipper filled her 
palm with water and threw it upward. It spattered 
into Rhoda’s face and she jerked back her head. 

The motion destroyed the balance she had gained. 
She uttered a stifled ejaculation and wavered again. 
Laura stretched out a hand and wickedly nudged 
the victim. 

“Oh, don’t!” yelled Nan, and she leaped down 
upon the mattresses. 

Rhoda completely lost her equilibrium. She ut- 
tered another scream and stepped out into space. 

“Man overboard !” shouted Laura. 

And as Rhoda fell the girl with the dipper flung 
its contents over the flying figure of the new girl. 


CHAPTER V 


RHODA IS UNPOPULAR 

The blindfolded Rhoda came down so awkward- 
ly that Nan feared she would be hurt. The girl 
from Tillbury screamed a warning — which was 
useless. 

But in that exciting moment Nan noted something 
that afterward gave her a sidelight upon Rhoda 
Hammond’s character. As the Western girl felt 
herself going she snatched off the blindfolding 
towel. 

Self-possession! Rhoda owned that attribute, 
largely developed. She was cool, if angry. 

When she landed on the padded platform, she 
fell on her knees, and the fall must have jarred her. 
But she was up in a flash, and the girl with the 
dipper, Minnie Wolff, found herself in the muscular 
grasp of Rhoda’s arms. 

“There, now. I’ve had enough of this foolish- 
ness !” snapped the Western girl, limping toward the 
platform steps. “I’ve wrenched my knee, and I 
should hope you’d be satisfied. I want nothing 
more to do with your baby plays ! I came to Lake- 

yiew; Hall to study and learn something ” 

34 


Rhoda Is Unpopular 35. 

“Oh, you are going to learn something all right,” j 
drawled Laura, interrupting Rhoda’s angry speech. 
“But I can see it is going to take you some time. 
Miss Rhoda Hammond. You are going to have a 
nice time here!” 

Rhoda pushed through the group of girls with 
blazing face. Her eyes were hard and dry. She 
had evidently hurt her knee quite badly, for she 
could not walk without limping. Nan ran after 
her, 

“Oh, Rhoda, don’t take it so,” she begged in a 
whisper. “It will make it so much harder for you.” 

“I don’t care 1” 

“But you want to be friends with us.” 

“With those girls?” repeated Rhoda, in scorn. 
“Not much!” 

“Oh, yes, you do. Every one of them is nice.” 

“They act so.” 

“They are!” reiterated Nan, “And you made 
Minnie cry.” 

“What did she want to throw that water on me 
for?” 

“But it didn’t hurt you,” Nan pointed out, “You 
are dressed for it !” 

“Yes,” snapped Rhoda, looking down at the 
jumper and overalls. “I look like a silly in these 
things.” 

“Well, you don’t need to act like a silly,” urged 
Nan, keeping pace with her, as Rhoda left the gym- 


36 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

nasium. “You are making it awfully hard for your- 
self. The girls won’t forgive you.” 

“Forgive me? Well, I like that!” scoffed Rhoda. 

“Oh, yes. It was all in fun. We all have to 
go through some such performance — ^when we are 
greenhorns.” 

“Not for jne!” exclaimed the Western girl with 
emphasis. 

Nan was silent for a moment, guiding the new 
girl through the unfamiliar and only half-lighted 
passages to the back stairway. Then Nan asked: 

“Does your knee hurt?’’ 

“Of course it does.” 

“I have some lotion in my room. It is good for 
a sprain, or anything like that. I’ll get it for you 
and you can rub it in well when you go to bed.” 

“If those girls come around to bother me 
again ” 

“I’m afraid they won’t,” said Nan, sorrowfully. 

“You’re afraid they won’t?” 

“Yes. They may let you very much alone. You 
won’t have much fun here.” 

“Humph! I can flock by myself,” said Rhoda, 
quite cheerfully. 

“But you can have so much better times if you 
are friends with the other girls.” 

“I don’t know about that. I don’t like any of 
them — as far as I’ve gone. Except you. Out 
where I come from — at Rose Ranch — ^there are 


Rhoda is Unpopular 37 

plenty of Mexican girls and Indian girls who are 
much more ladylike than this crowd. Why! these 
girls are savages.” 

“Oh, no, Rhoda 1 Not quite that,” laughed Nan. 
“You don’t understand. And I am afraid they 
won’t understand you.” 

“Who wants ’em to?” responded Rhoda Ham- 
mond gruffly. 

Nan Sherwood took the liniment into Rhoda’s 
room, and when she returned, bringing back the 
overall suit to be returned to Henry, she found her 
chum, Bess Harley, in their room, slowly preparing 
for bed. 

“Well! isn’t that the greatest girl you ever saw?” 
exclaimed Bess. “She will have a nice time here — 
not! And I should think you’d not have anything 
to do with her. Nan. The other girls won’t like it. 
We’re just going to ignore her. A girl who can’t 
take a joke !” 

“I shan’t have much to do with her until she 
comes to her senses,” Nan admitted, “But I am 
sorry for her, just the same.” 

“You’ll waste your ‘sorry’ on that one,” laughed 
Bess. 

“Perhaps. But don’t you realize, honey, that we 
came near being just as foolish as Rhoda Hammond 
when we came here last fall?” 

“Oh, nonsense !” ejaculated Bess ; but she blushed. 

“Think,” said Nan, with twinkling eyes. “Don’t 


38 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

you remember that shoe-boji lunch we brought with 
us and that the girls made so much sport of? 
Didn’t you get vexed?” 

“Oh! Well! Yes, a little,” admitted Bess. 
“But, Nan! I never acted as foolishly as this Rhoda 
Hammond. Now, did I?” 

“No, you did not, my dear,” agreed her chum. 

But she might honestly have claimed credit for 
this being a fact. It had been Nan’s better sense 
and her strong influence over her chum that had 
kept Bess Harley from acting quite as unwisely as 
Rhoda Hammond was now acting. 

“I expect,” was all Nan said, however, “that this 
poor Rhoda is going to have a Very unhappy time 
of it here, unless she changes her attitude.” 

“Well, she deserves to. She spoiled our fun and 
she hurt Minnie badly. I suppose she’s had no sort 
of bringing-up, coming right from that wild coun- 
try.” 

Nan chuckled. “I wonder 1 She thinks we lack 
proper up-bringing. She compares us unfavorably 
with the Mexican and Indian girls she has been 
used to out on the ranch from which she comes.” 

“Good-night!” gasped Bess indignantly, as she 
plunged into bed. 

It did not take a seeress to foretell Rhoda Ham- 
mond’s unpopularity during the opening days of 
this term at Lakeview Hall. It seemed that before 
breakfast the next morning the whole school was 


Rhoda is Unpopular 39 

buzzing with the story of the doings of- the girls 
of Corridor Four. 

That a newcomer should set herself contrary to a 
custom that had always been honored at the Hall, 
was considered unpardonable. Even the older girls 
< — seniors and juniors who thought themselves too 
dignified for such escapades — had merely a sar- 
castic smite for the new girl from the West. While 
the little girls — the “primes” — ^were frankly curious, 
and could scarcely keep their gaze off Rhoda at 
meals, or in the main hall at chapel. 

The privilege of hazing had seldom been abused 
by the girls. Dr. Prescott winked at the romps 
which never really hurt anybody. No girl with 
“ingrowing dignity,” as Amelia Boggs called it. 
could hope to be happy with her fellows at Lake- 
view Hall. 

“A proper amount of hazing is bound to reduce 
the size of the sawney’s ego,” Laura remarked. 
“This wild Western person has a swelled ego, if 
ever I saw one. But she shall be let alone, all 
right, if that is what she is so anxious for.” 

Nan was, as she said, sorry for Rhoda; but she 
could do nothing openly to help matters. She 
would not speak for the Western girl, for she felt 
that, in justice, Rhoda was in the wrong. 

Unlike many of the other girls, however, Nan 
failed to find anything about Rhoda’s character to 
dislike. Even Linda Riggs was not pleased with 


40 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

the girl from Rose Ranch. The latter girl threat- 
ened quite unconsciously to outshine the railroad 
magnate’s daughter in point of dress. 

Mrs. Cupp had something to say about that. It 
was said tartly enough, of course, and Rhoda had 
to take it before a good-sized party of other girls. 

“Where did your mother think you were coming 
to. Miss Hammond?” Mrs. Cupp demanded when 
she had looked over the contents of Rhoda’s two 
trunks. “These clothes might be of use if you ex- 
pected to attend the opera, or appear in society. How 
absurd to dress a young girl in such garments ! Your 
mother ” 

“Please, Mrs. Cupp, do not blame my mother if 
you think these things are not suitable for me to 
wear. She is not at — at fault for their selection. 
They were bought for me by a friend, mostly in 
Chicago.” 

“Humph! Your mother should have attended to 
your being properly dressed. This is a practical 
school, not a theatrical company, you have come to,” 
snapped Mrs. Cupp, who was always very severe 
in matters of dress. “Your mother ” 

“Don’t criticize my mother, please,” interrupted 
Rhoda again, and her voice was sharper. “My — 
my mother is blind; she could not pick out my 
clothes.” 

The statement sponged the smiles from the faces 
of all the girls within hearing. Unpopular as the 


Rhoda is Unpopular 41 

Western girl was, the fact she had made public 
somehow made the other girls taste pity for her for 
the first time. Bess Harley fairly sobbed when she 
and Nan got to their room with the piles of their 
own garments, which Mrs. Cupp had allowed them 
to take from their trunks. 

“It — it’s mean that she should have a blind 
mother,” cried Bess angrily. “Why, it makes us 
sorry for her. And she doesn’t deserve to be 
pitied.” 

“I wonder?” murmured Nan, somewhat moved 
herself by the incident. 

As the days went by. Nan Sherwood wondered 
more and more about Rhoda Hammond. Was she 
deserving of some sympathy for her situation in 
the school or not? Frankly, Nan was puzzled. 

Of course Rhoda was being absolutely left out of 
all the social good times and larks of the girls who 
should have been her mates. Likewise in classes 
and in indoor athletics she seemed out of place. 

She had been schooled mostly at home, it ap- 
peared. Nan understood — although Rhoda did not 
say as much — ^that her mother had personally con- 
ducted much of her education until the last two 
years. Then she had had a governess. 

The latter seemed to have been an English 
woman with rather old-fashioned ideas. Rhoda 
was grounded well in certain branches and densely 


42 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

ignorant in others which Dr. Prescott considered 
essential. 

And in the athletic classes ! 

“Why, I thought these Western cowgirls were 
just like boys — that they were even born with an 
ability to pitch a ball underhand, for instance, which 
we girls are not,” sighed Laura. “And look at that 
thing 1 She doesn’t know how to do an3rthing 
right.” 

“Oh, not as bad as that,” said Nan, smiling. 

“Stop trying to make excuses for her. Nan Sher- 
wood,” commanded the red-haired girl sharply. 
“I won’t have it. She never saw a basketball game 
before. She can scarcely lift herself waist-high 
on the parallel bars. Couldn’t chin herself five 
times in succession on the trapeze to save her life. 
Why ! she might ’as well be her own grandmother, 
she knows so little about athletics.” 

“Huh!” added Bess Harley with equal disgust, 
“I heard her tell Mrs. Gleason she thought such 
things were only for boys. She’s a regular sissy !” 
But this made her hearers laugh. 

Nan joined in the laughter, but she added : 

“You get into a wrestling match with her and see 
if she’s a sissy. She has developed her muscles by 
other means than gymnasium tricks. She is so very 
wiry and strong — you have no idea!” 

“But she walks so funny,” remarked Lillie 
Nevins. 


Rhoda is Unpopular 43 

“Perhaps that is because she has walked so little,” 
said Nan, wisely. 

“Humph!” Amelia Boggs commented, “has she 
been used to being pushed in a baby carriage ?” 

“Distances are long out in the cattle country. 
Everybody rides, I guess,” Nan observed. 

“Well,” one of the older girls remarked, “she’s 
no material for basketball, or any other team. She 
can’t even run, it seems. I guess we’ll have to pass 
her up.” 

Nor did Rhoda seem to mind being “passed up.” 
At least, if she missed the companionship of her 
schoolmates, she did not show it. Perhaps Nan 
Sherwood worried more about Rhoda than Rhoda 
did about herself. 

There came a day, however, when the girls of 
Lakeview Hall saw something in the girl from Rose 
Ranch that they were bound to admire. Rhoda 
Hammond possessed one faculty that raised her, 
head and shoulders, above most of her schoolmates 
who so derided her. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE MEXICAN GIRL 

..The schoolwork was in full swing by this time, 
and almost every girl seemed to be doing well. 
“Dr. Beulah,” as her pupils lovingly called the head 
of the school (though not, of course, to her face), 
went about with a smile most of the time; and even 
Mrs. Cupp was less grim than usual. 

There was an early January thaw that spoiled 
all outdoor sport for the Lakeview Hall girls. Skat- 
ing, bobsledding, skiing, and even walking, was 
taboo for a while, for there was more mud in sight 
than snow. The girls had to look for entertain- 
ment on Saturday in other directions. 

Therefore it was considered a real godsend by 
the girls of Corridor Four when Lillie Nevins told 
them of the new shop at Adminster. Adminster 
was about ten miles from Freeling, the little town 
under the cliff, where the Lakeview Hall girls 
usually shopped. 

“It must be a delightfully funny store,” said the 
flaxen-haired Lillie. “It’s full of those Indian 
blankets, and bead-trimmed things, and Mexican 

■V 

44 


The Mexican Girl 45 

drawn-work, and pottery. Oh! ancient pots and 
pitchers ” 

“Made last year in New Jersey?” scoflfed Laura 
Polk. 

“No, no I These are real Mexican. Doctor 
Larry’s girls told me about it. They have been 
over there and bought the loveliest things I” 

There was a good deal of talk about this. It 
was at the supper table. Nan and Bess were just 
as much interested as the other girls, and they de- 
termined to go to the Mexican curio shop if they 
could obtain permission. 

Nan noticed that for once Rhoda seemed inter- 
ested in what the other girls were saying. Her 
brown eyes sparkled and a little color came and 
went in her cheeks as the discussion went on. 

The girl from Tillbury was tempted to invite 
Rhoda to go with her on Saturday. Yet she felt 
that Rhoda was not in a mood to accept any over- 
ture of peace. The Western girl treated Nan her- 
self well enough; but Nan could not offend her 
older friends by showing Rhoda Hammond many 
favors. 

So many of the girls asked permission to visit 
Adminster on the next Saturday afternoon that 
Mrs. Cupp allowed Miss March, one of the younger 
instructors and a favorite of the girls, to accompany 
them. 

It was quite a party that picked its way dqwn 


46 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

the muddy track into Freeling’s Main Street where 
the interurban trolley car passed through toward 
Adminster. The girls under Miss March’s care all 
but filled the car when it came along ; but they were 
hardly settled when they spied Rhoda Hammond 
already sitting in a corner by herself. 

“Why, Rhoda,” said Miss March, rising and 
going to the Western girl as the car started, “I 
did not get your name as one of my party.” 

“No, Miss March,” said Rhoda coolly. 

“Did you obtain permission to leave the school 
premises ? That is a rule, you know.” 

“Yes, Miss March,” said Rhoda, “I obtained per-- 
mission.” 

“From whom, Rhoda?” asked the instructor, 
rather puzzled. 

“I telegraphed yesterday to my father. He sent 
a night letter to Dr. Prescott, and she got it this 
morning. She gave it to me. Here it is,” said 
the Western girl, taking the crumpled message from 
her handbag and handing it to the teacher. 

Miss March looked amazed when she had read the 
long message. “Dr. Prescott, then, granted you 
this privilege which he asks here?” 

“Yes, Miss March,” said Rhoda coldly, and Miss 
March went back to her seat. 

“Did you ever?” gasped Bess to Nan and Laura. 
“Why, it must have cost five dollars or more to 
telegraph back and forth,” 


The Mexican Girl 


47 

“Humph f she certainly doesn’t know the value of 
money,” commented Laura. “She is more reckless- 
ly extravagant than Linda.” 

The rest of the girls paid no further attention to 
Rhoda. • They were having too good a time among 
themselves. As there were few other passengers 
on that car to Adminster, the Lakeview Hall pupils 
came very near to taking charge of it. The con- 
ductor was good-natured, and the girls’ fun was 
kept in bounds by Miss March. 

All the time the Western girl sat in her comer 
and looked out of the front window at the dreary 
landscape. It seemed too bad. Nan Sherwood 
thought more than once, that Rhoda should have 
allowed herself to become so frankly ignored by 
her schoolmates. 

Nan missed her when the crowd got out of the 
car in Adminster. This was a larger town than 
Freeling, and it was on the main railroad line in- 
stead of a branch line, as Freeling was. But at 
that, Adminster was not very metropolitan. 

However, the stores fronting on the main street 
were rather attractive shops. Bess and Grace, with 
Nan herself, had some things to buy in the depart- 
ment store which was the town’s chief emporium, 
and they separated for a while from the rest of the 
party. 

But when the trio entered the Mexican shop, 
which was on a side street, there was the whole 


48 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

party of their schoolmates under Miss March’s 
charge. 

Some of the girls had already made purchases, 
and all were excited over certain finds they had 
made in the stock. Like all such stores that are 
established for a few months only, and move from 
town to town, there was much trash exhibited to- 
gether with some really worth while merchandise 
from the Southwest. 

Not all of the girls knew how to select the good 
from the trashy merchandise. There were a man, 
a woman, and a young girl who waited on the cus- 
tomers, all dressed in Mexican costumes ; they were 
too wise to interfere much with the selections of 
the customers in any department. 

The young girl came forward to meet Nan and 
her companions, courteously offering her services 
in showing any goods they might wish to look at. 
Nan shrewdly suspected the man and woman to 
be Jews; but this girl, with her large, black eyes, 
raven hair, and flashing white teeth, was undoubt- 
edly a Mexican. She was very pretty. 

“I can show what dhe yoong ladies want — ^yes?” 
she inquired with a most disarming smile. 

“Oh, we want to look about, first of all,” cried 
Bess. “Look at all those blankets. Nan! What 
bully things to throw over our couch !” 

“And that lovely spread!” cried Grace. 

They went from one lot of goods to another. 


The Mexican Girl 


49 


The Mexican girl, smiling and quite enjoying their 
comments, strolled after them. Nan turned to ask 
her a question regarding a beaded cloth that was 
evidently meant for a taMe-scarf. And at the 
moment Rhoda Hammond entered the shop. 

The saleswoman was nearest and she turned to 
welcome the Western girl. But Nan saw that' the 
girl who was waiting on her started as though to 
approach the newcomer. Then she stopped, and 
under her breath hissed an exclamation that must 
have been in Spanish. 

The girl’s eyes blazed, her black brows drew to- 
gether, and she gave every indication of an excite- 
ment that was originated by anger. It could be 
nothing else! 

Rhoda Hammond was perfectly unconscious of 
either the Mexican girl’s attention, or her emotion. 
With the saleswoman who had come to wait on her 
the girl from Rose Ranch was discussing the price 
of a piece of pottery which had attracted her notice. 

Suddenly the Mexican girl turned to see Nan 
Sherwood staring at her in wonder. She flushed 
darkly and was at first inclined to turn away. Then 
her excitement overpowered her natural caution. 
She seized Nan by the wrist with a pressure of her 
fingers that actually hurt. 

“You know all dhese yoong ladies — yes?” she 
demanded. “Dhey all coom wit’ you? Huh?” 


50 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

“Why, yes. We all come from the same school,” 
admitted the astonished Nan. 

“You know dhat girl ?” asked the Mexican, point- 
ing quickly at Rhoda. 

“Yes.” 

“She do go to school wit’ you all — ^yes? Her 
name?” demanded the other. 

“Why ” 

“Eet ees Ham-mon’ — ^no?” hissed the strangely 
acting girl. “Sehorita Ham-mon’ ?” 

“Her name is Hammond. Yes. Rhoda Ham- 
mond,” admitted Nan, scarcely knowing whether it 
was right to tell the girl this fact or not. 

“Ah, eet ees so! Senorita Ham-mon’, of dhe 
Ranchio Rose. Huh ?” 

“Why — ^why ” gasped Nan. “Yes, her home 

is at Rose Ranch. That is what she calls it.” 

“Ah!” hissed the Mexican girl, her eyes still 
glittering angrily. “See! See how reech she is 
dress’. Huh! The treasure of Ranchio Rose buy 
dhose dress’. Huh! Ah!” 

She flung herself about and walked hastily to 
the back of the store. Nan was speechless. She 
stood utterly amazed by the Mexican girl’s words 
and actions. 


CHAPTER IVII 


DOWN THE SLOPE 

Nobody seemed to have noticed the strange 
actions of the Mexican girl save Nan — least of all 
Rhoda herself. There was no time to speak of 
the incident while they remained in the shop, even 
had Nan decided that it was best to do so. 

The Mexican girl did not reappear from the rear 
of the shop. The girls all bought something — 
perhaps not wisely in every case. Nan Sherwood 
saw a queer smile on Rhoda Hammond’s face 
as she noted some of the trinkets the other girls pur- 
chased. Of course, the girl from Rose Ranch could 
have advised them about the real value of these ar- 
ticles. But who would ask her? 

It really was too bad. Most of the crowd ig- 
nored Rhoda Hammond altogether. They did not 
even speak to her when they brushed her furs in 
passing. 

Rhoda was beautifully dressed, and Bess audibly 
wondered who had purchased Rhoda’s clothes, as 
her mother’s affliction made it impossible for her 
to have selected them. 


51 


52 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

The Western girl left the store before the others 
had finished shopping and Nan fancied Rhoda 
intended to catch an earlier car back to Freeling 
than the one Miss March and her party were to 
take. Nan said nothing to Bess or to Grace regard- 
ing the peculiar actions of the Mexican girl who had 
evidently recognized Rhoda, and knew where she 
came from. Nan was enormously interested in the 
mystery ; but she did not think it was right to make 
common property of what she had seen or heard. 
She was the more tempted to go to Rhoda herself 
and ask about it. 

Perhaps it was something that Rhoda really ought 
to know. The Mexican girl had looked at the un- 
noticing Rhoda in a very angry way. And she had 
spoken very strangely. 

“The treasure of the Ranchio Rose buy those 
dresses.” 

That was a veiy peculiar way to have spoken, 
to say the least. What was “the treasure of Rose 
Ranch?” Nan was very desirous of asking Rhoda 
Hammond to explain. 

Of course she could not make the inquiry without 
telling Rhoda about the Mexican girl. Nan won- 
dered if that would be a wise thing to do. Rhoda 
had not appeared to notice the strange girl. Had she 
done so, would she have recognized the Mexican 
as the latter had her? 

All the time these thoughts and queries were riot- 


Down the Slope 53 

ing in Nan Sherwood’s mind she had to give her 
open attention to the buying of certain articles and 
to the questions and observations of the other girls. 
She and Bess purchased several things for their 
room; but Nan would have been better satisfied if 
they had been intimate enough with Rhoda to have 
asked her advice about the purchases. 

They all trooped out with their bundles at last. 

“My goodness!” laughed Bess, “we look like a 
gang of Italian immigrants being taken by a padrone 
into the woods. Only we should wear shawls over 
our heads instead of hats.” 

They went merrily along the streets to the point 
from which the car for Freeling started, and lo! 
there was Rhoda Hammond. She had evidently 
missed the previous car. 

“Is that girl going to tag us wherever we go?” 
Bess asked, with some vexation. 

“Sh!” warned Grace. “She has a perfect right 
to come over here to Adminster, of course.” 

“My goodness! I should say she has,” Lillie 
Nevins said, laughing. “After telegraphing to her 
father for permission.” 

When the car came along Rhoda got in at the 
front and took the corner seat again, while the 
others crowded in through the rear door. The old 
man who acted as motorman was well known to 
some of the girls, and they hailed him, as well as 
the conductor, gayly. But the motorman seemed 


54 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

in no pleasant mood, for he scarcely answered their 
sallies. 

He shut himself into the forward platform before 
the conductor gave the signal for starting, and 
dropped the latch on the double doors so that the 
girls should not disturb him. When the conductor 
took up the fares he said, on being questioned by 
Laura Polk: 

“Oh, John is not feeling well, I guess. He hasn’t 
acted like himself all day. But it’s as much as my 
life’s worth to ask him how he feels. He’s got the 
temper of a wolf when he’s imder the weather — 
poor old John has.” 

Of course, the girls gave the motorman little 
attention — unless Rhoda did from her situation up 
front. The rest of them only noticed him when he 
started or stopped the car with more than ordinary 
abruptness. 

“I do wish he wouldn’t jerk the car so,” com- 
plained Laura Polk. “He’s made me almost 
swallow my gum twice.” 

“Gracious, Laura!” gasped Lillie Nevins, looking 
alarmed, “if you really have any gum you had better 
swallow it before Miss March sees you.” 

At this Laura merely chuckled delightedly. 

“I really don’t like the way this man is running 
the car,” Miss March said finally to the conductor. 
“Tell him to have a care. He will have us off the 
track.” 


Down the Slope 55 

The interurban line was not a smooth, straight- 
ahead road. They swung around turns that were 
somewhat sharp. John stormed along as though 
he were running on a perfectly straight track. 

“I’ll see what I can do,’’ said the conductor 
doubtfully, and he went forward and tapped on the 
glass of the front door. But the motorman only 
gave him an angry glance and would not even reach 
around and lift the latch, 

“He’s running away with us!” exclaimed Lillie 
Nevins, who was always easily frightened, 

“Oh, my dear!” laughed another girl. “What 
an elopement!” 

“I hate to do it,” said the conductor, when he 
came back to Miss March. “But I’ll report him to 
the inspector when we get to the end of the route.” 

The car topped the heights of the ridge of hills 
that lay between Adminster and Freeling. On 
the Freeling side of the ridge the slope to the valley 
was almost continuous. But near the bottom was a 
sharp curve. Here was a low stone wall along 
the edge of the road, beyond which was a sheer 
drop of thirty or more feet into a rocky gorge. 
It was a perilous spot. More than one accident 
had happened there ; but never an electric car 
accident. 

The rapidity with which the motorman ran the 
car, and the jerky way in which he stopped and 
started it, did riot bother Naii Sherwood niuch, for 


56 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

she was not nervous. Miss March, however, began 
to stare ahead apprehensively, and the way in which 
she twisted her pocket-handkerchief in her 
hands as the car started down the long slope be- 
trayed her feelings. Nan was really sorry for Miss 
March. 

The wheels pounded over the rail- joints and the 
car began to rock threateningly. A small obstruc- 
tion on the track would very likely have thrown 
the car off the rails. 

“I do wish that man would have a care,” sighed 
Miss March. 

Nan jumped up. She feared that the teacher 
would soon become hysterical. Also, Grace and 
Lillie began to betray fear and more of the girls 
were anxious. Nan stumbled forward to the end 
of the car. Rhoda sat there, looking ahead, and 
betraying no emotion at all. 

Nan could see the shoulders of the motorman, 
who was sitting on the one-legged stool on which he 
had a right to rest when the car was out of town. 
The rules of the company did not force him to 
stand all the time. His head seemed to sag for- 
ward on his breast. The car was running so fast 
that he pitched from side to side on his seat 

Or was it from some other reason that his body 
swayed so? The question shocked Nan Sherwood. 

“Oh, Rhoda!” she exclaimed, turning to the 
Western girl, “what is the matter with him?” 


Down the Slope 57 

Rhoda Hammond sprang up. Her face was pale 
but her lips were firmly compressed. She clung to 
the handle of the door. Nan was holding herself 
upright by clinging to the other handle. 

“There is something the matter with that man!” 
cried the girl from Tillbury. 

They shook the door handles. Of course they 
could not open the door, nor did the motorman 
heed them in any way. 

Nan screamed aloud then. She saw the hands 
of the man slip from the handle of the brake and 
from the controller. The car seemed to leap ahead, 
gaining additional speed. The man slipped side- 
ways from his stool and crumpled on the platform 
of the car. 

The other girls did not see this. Even the con- 
ductor on the rear platform did not know what had 
happened. Only Nan and Rhoda realized fully the 
trouble. 

“My dear !” gasped Nan, “we cannot get to him. 
And nobody can stop the car!” 

She felt almost a sensation of nausea at the pit 
of her stomach. She did not weep or lose control 
of herself. But she felt frightfully helpless. 

There seemed nothing to do but to stand there, 
clinging to the door handle, and watch the car reel- 
ing down the slope at a speed that promised disaster 
at the curve, if not before. Never in her life, in 


58 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

any time of emergency, had Nan Sherwood felt so 
utterly helpless. 

The girl from the West said not a word. She, 
too, clung to the handle and stared through the 
pane at the crumpled figure of the motorman on 
the platform. But she remained thus only for a 
moment. 

Suddenly she swung sideways and pushed Nan 
away from the door. The latter tumbled into the 
nearest seat. Hanging by her left hand to the door 
handle, Rhoda Hammond doubled her gloved right 
and smashed one of the glass panes in the door. 

At the crash of glass Nan sprang to Rhoda’s side, 
and everybody screamed. The conductor burst 
open the rear door and started forward. Rhoda 
paid no attention to the shouts behind her. 

She reached through the broken pane and lifted 
the latch which held the two halves of the door 
together. She flung them apart and leaped down 
the single step to the enclosed front platform of 
the car. Nan close at her side. 

The conductor arrived. But it was the girl from 
Rose Ranch who did it all. She seized the con- 
troller and turned off the current. Her right hand 
wound up the brake as though she had practiced the 
work. Fast as the car was speeding, the pressure 
on the wheels made itself felt almost at once. Nan 
wished to help, but realized that in her ignorance 
she might blunder, so held herself in. 


Down the Slope 59 

“What’s happened to John?” demanded the 
conductor. “My goodness!” he added to Rhoda, 
“you’re a smart girl.” 

But he took her place at the brake. The car did 
not halt at once. It ran down almost to the turn 
in the road before it came to a jarring halt. 

Some of the frightened girls had gathered around 
Miss March. The others crowded forward. Nan 
was holding Rhoda Hammond tight about the neck, 
and she kissed her warmly. 

“You are a splendid girl, Rhoda!” Nan cried. 
“You stopped the car.” 

“I didn’t see that you showed any white feather. 
Nan,” urged Bess Harley. 

“Ah, but Rhoda was more than brave. She knew 
what to do. We’d have gone off the track and 
pitched over that wall probably, if it had depended 
on me to stop this old car,” declared Nan gener- 
ously. 


CHAPTER ¥III 


AFTERNOON TEA 

The girls from Lakeview Hall were not likely to 
forget their experience on the car for many a long 
day. And they were honestly appreciative of the 
fact that Rhoda Hammond, the girl from Rose 
Ranch, had saved their lives. 

But they did not really know how to show Rhoda 
that, in spite of her bad start at the Hall, the atti- 
tude of at least the party of girls who had been with 
her in the electric car, had changed toward her. 

Nan put her arms about the Western girl and 
kissed her warmly. She could do that, for from 
the start she had been kind to the girl from Rose 
Ranch. But the others hesitated. Rhoda was not 
a shallow girl. She did not turn easily from one 
attitude to another. 

The unconscious motorman had been picked up 
and laid on a seat in the car, and the conductor had 
run them into Freeling. John was there put in a 
hospital ambulance. That was all they could do for 
him. 

The doctors said he had been walking around 
6o 


Mifternoon Tea 


6i 


suffering from pneumonia for several days. The 
girls sent him flowers and some other luxuries and 
comforts when he was better. 

But what could they do for Rhoda? 

“I don’t think we had better try to do anything 
for her,” Nan finally said, after suggestions had 
been discussed ranging from presenting Rhoda 
with a gold medal to falling down on their knees 
and begging her forgiveness. 

“We have nothing really to ask her pardon for. 
It actually was her own stupidity that made her 
begin so unfortunately among us. She, perhaps, 
can’t see that. Or, if she does, she is too obstinate 
to admit it.” 

“Why, Nan!” cried warm-hearted Bess Harley, 
who, once moved in the right direction, could not 
do too much for the object of her approval. “Why, 
Nan! you speak as though you did not like Rhoda, 
after all. You are the only one who stood up for 
her all those weeks.” 

“When did I stand up for her?” demanded Nan. 
“I would not treat her unkindly. But I have 
thought all the time she was in the wrong. And 
there is no use going to Rhoda and telling her we 
were wrong and that we are sorry. That would 
not only be a falsehood, but it would do no lasting 
good.” 

“Hear! Hear!” cried Amelia. “Minerva Sher- 
wood speaks.” 


62 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

“I guess Nan has got the ‘wise’ of it,” agreed 
Laura. “No matter how well we may think of 
Rhoda, she would be equally offended if we all 
suddenly changed toward her in a way to make her 
conspicuous. We must begin treating her natu- 
rally.” 

“That’s all right,” agreed Amelia. “But we can- 
not overlook the incident of that car ride.” 

“I should say not!” exclaimed Bess Harley. 

“Everybody is talking about it,” said Grace. 

“Dr. Beulah spoke of it this morning at chapel,” 
Lillie said, “although she did not mention Rhoda’s 
name.” 

“But everybody knew who she meant,” Bess 
declared. 

“For that she can thank Miss March,” laughed 
Laura. “She will never get over talking about 
Rhoda’s bravery.” 

“And poor Rhoda looked scared in chapel,” said 
Nan. “She thought she was going to be publicly 
commended for what she had done,” and Nan 
finished with laughter. 

“Well,” cried Bess, “what shall we do, girls?” 

“No,” Nan said once more with gravity, “that 
isn’t it. It’s what will she do? That is the ques- 
tion. Let Rhoda meet us half way, at least. Other- 
wise we’ll all be stiff and formal and never get any 
nearer to that wild Western girl than before. I’ll' 
tell you !” 


Afternoon Tea 63 

“Go ahead. That’s what we are waiting for. 
Tell us,” begged Laura. 

They gathered closer about the girl from Till- 
bury and Nan lowered her voice while she ex- 
plained her idea. So the girls of Corridor Four — 
at least, all those who had been aboard the electric 
car when Rhoda’s self-possession had saved them 
from disaster — were merely courteous to the girl 
from Rose Ranch, or smiled at her when they met, 
and kept deftly away from the exciting adventure 
in their conversation while Rhoda was near. 

Apparently the afternoon tea was given in Room 
Seven in honor of Beautiful Beulah, Nan’s famous 
doll. 

“But I’m too big to play dolls,” Rhoda Hammond 
objected when Nan urged her attendance on a rainy 
Saturday afternoon. 

“Pshaw!” laughed Nan, “you’re not too big to 
pass tea and cocoa and sweet crackers to the primes 
who will come to worship at the shrine of my 
Beautiful Beulah. That’s what I want you for — 
to help. Bess and I can’t do it all.” 

It was hard to refuse Nan Sherwood anything. 

“Laura declares one has to be real mad at you 
to get out of anything you want us to do!” com- 
plained Bess one day, when yielding to Nan’s 
pressure and doing something she would have pre- 
ferred not to do. 

These “doll-teas” in Number Seven, Corridor 


64 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

Four, had become very popular toward the latter 
end of the previous term at Lakeview Hall. Every 
girl in the school — even the seniors and juniors — 
knew of Beautiful Beulah, and the little girls in the 
primary department flocked to Nan Sherwood’s 
parties whenever they had the chance, bringing 
their own dolls. 

On this particular occasion, however, the young 
girls came early, were "primed” (as Laura said) 
with goodies and cocoa, and sent away; the older 
girls, dropping in one by one, were huddled on 
beds, chairs, the couch, and even sat Turk-fashion 
on the floor, gradually filling the room. The crowd 
included all those girls who had gone to Adminster 
two Saturdays previous. 

Nan had kept Rhoda so busy helping behind the 
tea table that the Western girl did not realize at 
once how the character of the party had changed. 
And shrewd Nan had got Rhoda to talking, too. 

A query or two about Rose Ranch, something 
about the Navaho blanket Nan and her chum had 
bought for their couch — before she knew it the 
girl from the West was eagerly describing her 
home, and telling more in ten minutes about her life 
before she had come to Lakeview Hall than she had 
related to anybody in all the weeks she had been 
here. , 

“Rose Ranch must be a great place,” sighed Bess 
longingly. 


Afternoon Tea 


65 


“A beautiful country?” suggested Amelia. 

“Magnificent views all around us,” Rhoda agreed 
softly. “A range of hills to the southeast that we 
call the Blue Buttes. Many mesas on their tops, 
you know, on which the ancient Indian peoples 
used to till their gardens. There was a city of 
Cliff Dwellers not fifty miles from our house.” 

“Sounds awf’ly interesting,” declared Laura. 

“And winding through the Blue Buttes is the old 
Spanish Trail. Up from Mexico by that trail came 
the Spanish Conquistadors, they say,” Rhoda went 
on, quite excited herself now, in telling of her home 
and its surroundings. 

“And I s’pose there’s an electric car line running 
through those hills now — on the Spanish Trail, I 
mean?” laughed Laura. 

“Well, no. We’re not quite as far advanced as 
that,” the Western girl said, good-naturedly enough. 
“But we don’t have any Indian scares nowadays. 
The Indians used to ride through that gap in the 
Blue Buttes years ago. Now it’s only Mexican 
bandits.” 

“Never!” gasped Bess, sitting up suddenly. 

“You don’t mean it?” from Grace and Lillie in 
unison. 

“You’re just spoofing us, aren’t you, Rhoda?” 
drawled Amelia Boggs. 

“No, no. We do have Mexican bandits. There 
is Lobarto. He is no myth.” 


66 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

“Fancy!” exclaimed one of the other girls. “A 
live bandit!” 

“Very much so,” said Rhoda. “He has made us 
a lot of trouble, this Lobarto ; although it heis been 
six years since he came into our neighborhood last. 
He drove off a band of father’s horses at that time. 
But our boys got after him so quick and chased him 
so hard that they say he took less back to Mexico 
with him than be brought over the border.” 

“What does that mean?” asked Bess quickly. 

“Why, he brought with him a lot of plunder, 
they say,” Rhoda explained, “and he could not 
carry it back.” 

“Then your folks got the plunder?” inquired Nan. 

“Not exactly! Lobarto hid it. But our boys 
got back the horses. And they killed several of 
Lobarto’s gang.” 

“Mercy! Just listen to her!” cried Laura ex- 
citedly. “Why! I was just making believe about 
your coming from the wild and woolly West; and 
you really do!” 

“Not very woolly around Rose Ranch,” said 
Rhoda grimly. “Father does not approve of sheep. 
The nesters make us trouble enough, without having 
sheepmen.” 

“What are ‘nesters’ ?” asked Amelia. 

“I guess you’d call ’em ‘squatters’ farther East. 
We don’t like them on the ranges. They are small 


Afternoon Tea 67 

farmers who come and take up quarter sections of 
the open lands and fence them in.” 

“But is there really a treasure buried on Rose 
Ranch?” asked Nan, much more interested in this 
than she wished the others to observe, 

“Why, I suppose so. They all say so. Lobarto 
and his gang were run off so quick that he had to 
cache almost everything but the hard cash he had 
with him. He had raided two churches in Mexico 
and plundered several haciendas before coming up 
from the Border, so people say.” 

“Why don’t you ranch folks go and dig up his 
loot?” demanded Bess, wide-eyed. 

“Well,” laughed Rhoda, “we don’t know where 
it is cached. It sounds rather preposterous, too — 
a wagon-load of gold and silver plate, altar orna- 
ments, candlesticks, jeweled cloths, and all that. 
It does sound sort of romantic, doesn’t it?” 

“I should say it did !” the girls chorused. 

Nan did not say another word in comment at the 
time. She was enormously curious about what she 
had overheard the Mexican girl say in the shop at 
Adminster. And how strangely she had stared at 
Rhoda Hammond ! 


CHAPTER IX 


NOT ALWAYS "bUTTERFINGERS” 

Following that afternoon tea matters changed 
for Rhoda Hammond at Lakeview Hall. Nor did 
she overlook Nan’s part in bringing her into the 
social life of the girls whom she met in classes and 
at the table. 

At her books Rhoda was neither brilliant nor dull. 
She was just a good, ordinary student who stood 
well enough in her classes to satisfy Dr. Prescott. 
In athletics, however, Rhoda did not reach a high 
mark. 

In the first place she could not see the value of all 
the gymnasium exercises ; and the indoor games did 
not interest her much. She was an outdoors girl 
herself, and had stored up such immense vitality 
and was so muscular and wiry that she possibly did 
not need the exercises that Mrs. Gleason insisted 
upon. 

They tried Rhoda at basketball, and she proved 
to be a regular “butterfingers.” Laura, who cap- 
tained one of the scrub teams, tried to make some- 
thing of her, but gave it up in exasperation. 

68 


Not Always “Butterfingers” 69 

Nan, Bess, and Amelia took Rhoda to the base- 
ment tennis court and did their best to teach her 
tennis. She learned the game quickly enough ; but 
to her it was only “play.” 

“She hasn’t a drop of sporting blood in her,” 
groaned Bess. “It seems just silly to her. It is 
something to pass away the time. Batting a little 
ball about with a snowshoe, she calls it ! And if she 
misses a stroke, why, she lumbers after the ball like 
that bear we saw in the Chicago Zoo, Nan, that 
chased snowballs. ’Member ?” 

“Well, I never!” laughed Nan. “Rhoda’s no 
bear.” 

“But she surely is a ‘butterfingers,’ ” Amelia 
said. “No fun in her at all.” 

“Says she doesn’t see any reason for getting in a 
perspiration running down here, when she might 
be using her spare time upstairs reading a book, or 
knitting that sweater for Nan’s Beautiful Beulah.” 

So, after all, Rhoda Hammond did not become 
very popular with her schoolmates during those two 
long and dreary months, February and March, when 
outdoor exercise was almost impossible in the local- 
ity of Lakeview Hall. 

Best of all, Rhoda liked to sit in Number Seven, 
Corridor Four, with Nan and Bess and others who 
might drop in and talk. If Rhoda herself talked, 
it was almost always about Rose Ranch. Some- 


70 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

times about her mother, though she did not often 
speak of Mrs. Hammond’s affliction. 

To Nan, Rhoda had once said her mother had 
been a school-teacher who had gone from the East 
to the vicinity of the Mexican Border to conduct a 
school. Her eyes had been failing then; and the 
change of climate, of course, had not benefited her 
vision. 

“Daddy Hammond,” said Rhoda, speaking lov- 
ingly of her father, “is twenty years older than 
mother ; but he was so kind and good to her, I guess, 
when she had to give up teaching, that she just fell 
in love with him. You know, I fell in love with 
him myself when I got big enough to know how 
good he was,” and she laughed softly. 

“You see, he knows me a whole lot better than 
mother does, for she has never seen me.” 

“Doesn’t that sound funny!” gasped Nan. 
“Fancy ! Your own mother never having seen you, 
Rhoda 1” 

“Only with her fingers,” sighed Rhoda. “But 
mother says she has ten eyes to our two apiece. 
She ‘sees’ with the end of every finger and thumb. 
It is quite wonderful how much she learns about 
things by just touching them. And she rides as 
bravely as though she had her sight.” 

“My!” exclaimed Nan, with a little shudder. “It 
would scare me to see her.” 

“Oh, she rides a horse that is perfectly safe. Old 


Not Always “Butterfingers” 71 

Cherrypie seems to know she can’t see and that he 
has to be extremely careful of her.” 

It was when Rhoda told more about the ranch, 
however — of the bands of half-wild horses, the 
herds of shorthorns, the scenery all about her home, 
the acres upon acres of wild roses in the near-by 
canons, the rugged gulches and patches of desert 
on which nothing but cacti grew, the high mesas 
that were Nature’s garden-spots — that Nan Sher- 
wood was stirred most deeply. 

“I think it must be a most lovely place, that Rose 
Ranch !” she cried on one occasion. 

“It is a lovely place ; and I’d dearly love to have 
you see it. Nan Sherwood. You must go home 
with me when school is over. Oh, what a lark! 
That would be just scrumptious, as Bess says.” 

“Oh, it is too long a journey. I never could go 
so far,” Nan said, wistfully it must be confessed. 

But Rhoda nodded with confidence. “Oh, yes, 
you could,” she declared. “You spent your Christ- 
mas holidays in Chicago with Grace, And before 
that, you say, you went up to a lumber camp in 
Michigan. One journey is no worse than another 
— only that to Rose Ranch is a little longer.” 

“A little longer!” 

“Well, comparatively. To going to China, for in- 
stance,” laughed Rhoda. “Of course you can go 
home with me.” 

But Nan laughed at that cool statement. She was 


72 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

quite sure Momsey and Papa Sherwood would veto 
any such wild plan. And she had been away so 
much from them during the past year. But she 
received fine reports regarding her mother’s health 
and Papa Sherwood’s new automobile business ; and 
little Inez, under Momsey’s tuition, was beginning 
to write brief, scrawly notes to Nan to tell her how 
happy she was in the little dwelling in amity. 

Winter could not linger in the lap of spring for 
ever. The snow under the hedges disappeared 
almost over night. The mud of the highways 
dried up. 

The sparkling surface of the lake was ruffled 
temptingly by the light breezes and drew the girls 
of Lakeview Hall boatward. The outdoor tennis 
courts, the croquet grounds, the basketball enclosure, 
and the cinder track were put into shape for the 
season. The girls buzzed outside the Hall like 
bees about a hive at swarming time. 

Grace Mason took up horseback riding again. 
Her father and mother were still at their town 
house, but her brother Walter and his tutor were 
at the summer home a short distance from Lake- 
view Hall, where he was “plugging,” as he called 
it, for the entrance examinations of a college pre- 
paratory school in the fall. 

Walter had been unable to be much with his sister 
since the holidays; but now he came for Grace 
three times a week to accompany her on her rides. 


Not Always “Butterfingers” 73 

He bestrode his own big black horse, Prince, lead- 
ing the speckled pony Grace was to ride. The pony 
was a nervous, excitable creature. Rhoda, seeing 
it for the first time, asked Nan ; 

“Is Grace Mason used to that creature?” 

“I don’t know. I never saw it before. But the 
pony can’t be any worse than the big black horse 
that Walter rides.” 

“Why, what is the matter with him?” asked the 
Western girl. 

“Prince is so high-spirited. You never know 
what he is going to do.” 

“I guess the black horse is spirited ; but that is not 
a fault,” Rhoda said. “He looks all right to me. 
But that little flea-bitten grey is a tricky one. You 
can tell that. See how her eyes roll.” 

“Do you think the pony will bite?” asked Lillie 
Nevins, Grace’s chum, who overheard the girl from 
Rose Ranch. 

“Goodness ! I should hope so. She’s got teeth,” 
laughed Rhoda. “But I mean that probably she is 
skittish — ^will shy at the least little thing. And per- 
haps she will run away if she gets the chance.” 

“Then I shouldn’t think Walter would leave them 
there alone beside the road,” Nan said thoughtfully. 

“Reckon he trusts that black horse to stand. 
He’s looped the reins of the grey over the pommel 
of his own saddle. And that’s not a smart trick,” 
added Rhoda. 


74 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

“Why don’t you get a horse and ride with them, 
Rhoda?” asked Bess Harley. “I guess you just 
ache to get on that pony?’’ 

“What! Side-saddle?’’ gasped the girl from 
Rose Ranch. “I wouldn’t risk my neck that way.” 

Suddenly somebody batted a determined tennis 
ball from far down the nearest court. It whizzed 
over the back stop, and — bang! — hit the grey pony 
on the nose. 

Rhoda had not been a bad prophet. The pony 
with the rolling eye leaped and snorted, all four feet 
in the air at once, and just as crazy in an instant 
as ever a horse could be. 

But perhaps a much better trained and better- 
tempered animal would have done the same. She 
jerked the loop of her bridle-rein off Prince’s 
saddlehorn in that first jump. Then she was away 
like the wind, her little hoofs spurning the gravel 
of the path that crossed the school’s athletic field 
and led to the broad steps that led down the face of 
the cliff to the boathouse and cove. 

Mad as the pony was, she might have cast herself 
down the steep flight. Frightened animals have 
done such things upon less provocation. 

The girls screamed, and that only lent wings to 
the grey’s flying hoofs. But the horror and wild 
despair of the group at the edge of the field were not 
caused by the mere running away of the grey pony. 

The mad creature was headed for the brink of the 


Not Always “Butterfingers” 75 

cliff; but between the pony and that side of the field 
was a group of the smaller girls at play. There 
were almost thirty of the little girls of the Hall 
engaged in a game of tag, and utterly oblivious to 
the drumming hoofs of the pony! 

The girls did not instantly see the pony coming. 
And when they did realize their peril they milled 
for a minute right in her track like a herd of fright- 
ened cattle. 

Scarcely had the pony started from the road, 
however, and the peril of the girls become apparent, 
when Rhoda Hammond leaped into action, jump- 
ing to the back of Walter Mason’s pSwing black 
Prince. 

The girl from Rose Ranch seemed to reach the 
saddle in a single spring. She was astride the 
snorting horse and her feet instinctively sought the 
stirrups, as Prince leaped away in the track of the 
grey pony. 

The stirrup-leathers were longer than Rhoda was 
used to; for most Western riders use a shorter 
leather than was the custom about Lakeview Hall. 
But, almost standing erect as Prince thundered 
across the athletic field, Rhoda seemed perfectly 
poised both in body and mind. To see her, one 
would never suppose that it was possible to fall 
out of a saddle. 

The big black horse seemed to know just what 
was expected of him. He scarcely needed guiding. 


76 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

The girl’s hair snapped out behind her in the wind ; 
her set face, visible to a few of the spectators, 
gave them confidence. She was no “butterfingers” 
now. She was going to do what she had set out 
to do — no doubt of that ! 

She rode slightly stooping forward from the 
waist, with left hand outstretched while Prince’s 
reins were gathered loosely in her right hand. The 
shrieking children were huddled right before the 
grey pony. It did seem as though they could not 
possibly escape being trampled upon. 

But the stride of the big black horse was almost 
twice the length of the pony’s. And he answered 
the rein perfectly. Rhoda rode to the right of the 
grey, stretched forward her long arm, and swerved 
her own mount at the same moment. 

A single jerk on the lines of the pony, dragging 
her sideways, and the runaway crossed her forefeet 
and crashed to the ground, almost throwing a 
somersault the fall was so abrupt. 

But the grey was not much hurt. Rhoda had 
drawn Prince in, was out of the saddle, had run to 
seize the pony’s bridle before the fallen animal could 
get to her feet and continue her mad race. 


CHAPTER X 


THE TREASURE OF ROSE RANCH 

Walter Mason came running as hard as he 
could across the field; but he had only to seize 
Prince’s reins and manage that excited animal. 
Rhoda had the grey pony well in hand. 

“Well, you’re a wonder for a girl!” exclaimed 
Grace’s brother. 

“Humph!” said Rhoda in return, “I don’t con- 
sider that a compliment — if you meant it as such. 
Look out, or that black horse will step on you.” 

“She was just as cool as a cucumber,” Walter 
told Nan and his sister afterward. “Why ! I never 
saw such a girl.” 

“I guess,” Nan Sherwood said shrewdly, “that 
we don’t know much about girls who are born and 
brought up in the far West. Rhoda Hammond is 
a friend to be proud of. She has such good sense.” 

“And pluck to beat the band!” cried Walter. 
“I’d like to see that country* she comes from.” 

“And me, too,” agreed Bess Harley, who over- 
heard this statement. 

“ ‘Rose Ranch,’ ” murmured Grace. “Spch ^ 


77 


78 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

pretty name! After all, she has said just enough 
about it to be very tantalizing,” and the smaller 
girl smiled. 

“Maybe she does that purposely,” Bess remarked. 
“Perhaps she thinks we have so many things she 
hasn’t obtained yet, that she wants to make us 
jealous a bit.” 

“I really don’t think that Rhoda worries about 
what she doesn’t have,” Nan put in. “Perhaps she 
doesn’t even see that she lacks anything that we 
have.” 

“Well, she never will go in for athletics,” Bess 
declared. 

“Athletics I” burst out Walter. “Why, there isn’t 
another girl at Lakeview Hall who could do what 
she did just now.” 

They were all agreed on that point. Even Dr. 
Prescott and the staff of instructors commented 
upon Rhoda’s stopping the runaway. Professor 
Krenner, the mathematics teacher, and with whom 
Nan and Amelia Boggs took architectural drawing, 
selected Rhoda to be one of a small party at his 
cabin up the lake one spring afternoon. And the 
professor’s parties were famous and very much en- 
joyed by those girls who understood the queer and 
humorous old gentleman. 

He played his key-bugle for them, showed them 
how to bark birches for the purpose of making ca- 
qoes (he was building one for his own use) and 


The Treasure of Rose Ranch 79 

finally gave them a supper of wild duck, served on 
birch-bark platters, and corn pone baked on a plank 
before the embers of a campfire and seasoned mildly 
with wood smoke. 

This incident cheered Rhoda up. She had begun 
to be dreadfully homesick as the good weather 
came. She confessed to Nan that she was very 
much tempted to run away from school and return 
to the ranch. Only she knew her father and mother 
would be terribly disappointed in her if she did 
such a thing. 

“And besides that,” Rhoda said, with a quiet lit- 
tle smile, “I want company when I go back to Rose 
Ranch.” 

“Oh, yes,” said the innocent Nan. “You do 
know people in Chicago, don’t you?” 

“Humph! Mamma’s friend, Mrs. Janeway. 
Yes,” said Rhoda, still secretly amused, “I don’t 
want to go away out to Rose Ranch alone and come 
back alone next fall. For I’ve got to come back, I 
suppose.” 

“Why, Rhoda!” exclaimed Nan, “I can’t see why 
you don’t like Lakeview Hall.” 

“Wait till you see Rose Ranch, Then you’ll 
know.” 

“But I don’t expect ever to see that,” sighed Nan; 
for she really had begun to think so much about 
Rhoda’s home, and had listened so closely to the 
tales the Western girl related, that Nan felt her- 


8o Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

self drawn strongly toward an outdoor experience 
such as Rhoda enjoyed at home. It \>fOuld be even 
more free and primitive, Nan thought, than her 
sojourn at Pine Camp. 

“You are terribly pessimistic,” laughed the West- 
ern girl in rejoinder to Nan’s last observation. 
“How do you know you’ll never see Rose Ranch ?” 

Even this remark did not make Nan suspect what 
was coming. Nor did Bess Harley or the Masons 
have any warning of the plan Rhoda Hammond had 
so carefully thought out. But the surprise “broke” 
one afternoon at mail time. 

Both Nan and Bess received letters from home, 
and they ran at once to Room Seven, Corridor 
Four, to read them. Scarcely had they broken the 
seals of the two fat missives when the door was 
flung open and Grace Mason fairly catapulted her- 
self into the room in such a state of excitement 
that she startled the Tillbury chums. 

“What is the matter, Grace?” gasped Bess, as 
the smaller girl threw herself into Nan’s arms. 

“Why! she’s only happy,” said Nan, holding her 
off and viewing her flushed and animated counte- 
nance. “Do get your breath, Gracie.” 

“And — when I do — I’ll take yours !” gasped 
Grace. She held up a letter. “From mother. She 
— she says we can go — Walter and I — both of us !” 

“Well, for mercy’s sake!” exclaimed Bess, “where 


The Treasure of Rose Ranch 8i 

are you going? Though I should say you, Grace, 
had already gone. Crazy, you know.” 

“To Rose Ranch!” almost shouted Grace. 

In astounded repetition, Nan and Bess fairly 
shrieked : “T o Rose Ranch?’* 

“My goodness, yes! Haven’t you heard about 
it? My letter says Rhoda’s invited both of you 
girls, too, and that Walter is going. Is — it a 
hoax ?” 

Nan and Bess stared at each other in amazement 
for a single moment; then, like a flash, they tore 
open their own letters, both being those prized 
“mother letters” so dear to every boarding-school 
girl’s heart, and unfolded the missives the envel- 
opes contained. It was Bess who found it first. 

“It’s here ! It’s here ! Just think of Rhoda Ham- 
mond keeping this secret from us 1 She wrote her 
folks and they wrote to mine — and to yours. Nan 
1 — and Gracie’s. Oh! Ob! We’re going, going, 
going!” 

“Isn’t it fine?” cried Grace, dancing up and down 
in her delight. 

“Delightsome! Just delightsome!” agreed Bess, 
coining a new word to express her own joy. “Three 
cheers and a tiger! And a wildcat! And a pan- 
ther! And — ^and Well! all the other trim- 

mings that may go with three cheers,” she con- 
cluded because she was out of both breath and in- 
spiration. 


Sz Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

“And Rhoda’s folks must be awfully nice people,”' 
Grace said warmly. “And her mamma ” 

But Nan was deep in her own letter from Mom- 
sey, and here follows the part of it dealing with 
this wonderful news which had so excited all three 
of the girls: 

“Your new friend, Rhoda, must be a very lovely 
girl, and I want you to bring her home to Tillbury 
the day school closes. I know she must be a nice 
girl by the way her mother writes me. Her mother 
is blind, but she has had somebody write me that 
she wants very much to ‘see’ Nan Sherwood, who 
has been so kind to her Rhoda during the latter’s 
first term at Lakeview. 

“This makes me very happy and proud, Nan 
dear; for if your schoolmates love you so much 
that they write home about you, I am sure you are 
doing as well at school as Papa Sherwood and I 
could wish you to. And this Mrs. Hammond is 
very insistent that you shall visit Rose Ranch this 
summer. Mrs. Harley came to see me about it, 
and we have decided that you and Elizabeth can go 
home with Rhoda, if the Masons likewise agree to 
let Grace and Walter go. There is a lady going 
West to Rose Ranch at the same time — a Mrs. 
Janeway — ^who is a friend of Mrs. Hammond’s. 
She will look after you young folk en route, and 
will return with you. 


The Treasure of Rose Ranch 83 

“But we must have you a little while first, my 
Nan; and you must bring Rhoda here to the little 
cottage in amity for a few days, at least, befo’-e the 
party starts West. And ” 

But this much of the letter was all Nan would 
let the other girls hear. She was quite as happy as 
either Grace or Bess. And all three of them tripped 
away at once to find Rhoda and try to tell her just 
how delighted they were over this plan. 

“It never seemed as though I should see Rose 
Ranch,” Nan sighed ecstatically when they had 
talked it all over. “It is too good to be true.” 

As the term lengthened the girls were pushed 
harder and harder by the instructors, and Bess and 
others like her complained a good deal. 

“The only thing that keeps me going is a mirage 
of Rose Ranch ahead of me,” declared Nan’s chum, 
shaking her head over the text books piled upon 
their study table. “Oh, dear me. Nan! if anything 
should happen to make it impossible for us to go 
with Rhoda, I certainly should fall — down — and — 
die!" 

“Oh, nothing will happen as bad as that,” laughed 
Nan. 

“Well, nothing much ever does happen to us,” 
agreed Bess. “But suppose something should hap- 
pen to Rhoda?” 

“Shall we set a bodyguard about her?” asked 


84 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

Nan, her eyes twinkling. “Do you think of any 
particular danger she may be in? I fancy she is 
quite capable,.of taking care of herself.” 

“Now, Nan!” cried Bess, “don’t poke fun. It 
would be awful if an)dhing should happen so that 
we couldn’t go to Rose Ranch with her.” 

Perhaps this was rather a selfish thought on Bess 
Harley’s part. Still, Bess was not notably unself- 
ish, although she had improved a good deal during 
the months she had been at Lakeview Hall. 

But Nan had occasion to remember her chum’s 
words very clearly not long thereafter, for she did 
find Rhoda Hammond in trouble. It was one Fri- 
day afternoon when Nan was returning from her 
architectural drawing lesson at Professor Kren- 
ner’s cabin, up the lake shore, Amelia had not 
gone that day, being otherwise engaged; so Nan 
was alone on the path through the spruce wood 
that here clothed the face of the high bluff on which 
Lakeview Hall was set. 

A company of jays squalling in a thicket had been 
the only disturbing sounds in the sun-bathed woods, 
when of a sudden Nan heard somebody speak — a 
high and angry voice. Then in Rhoda’s deeper 
tones, she heard : 

“What do you mean, confronting me like this? 
I do not know you. You are crazy I” 

“Maybe I am cr-r-razy!” cried the second voice, 
its owner rolling her “r’s” magnificently. “But I 



Rhoda was backing away from a girl with uplifted, clenched 
hand. ( See page 85 ) 




1 , JL 

\ I 




•w - . • . ► • 

*^ • - . « 





■n 


The Treasure of Rose Ranch 85 

am »ot a thief. You, Sehorita Ham-mon’, are 
that! You and all your fam-i-lee are the thiefs — 
yes 1” 

Nan’s thought flashed instantly to the Mexican 
girl in the shop in Adminster. She had spoken in 
just this way. And she had given at that time 
every indication of hating Rhoda. 

The girl from Tillbury pushed into the thicket 
from which the voices sounded. Rhoda replied to 
the castigation of the other’s tongue only by an 
ejaculation of amazement. The harsher voice 
went on: 

“The tr-r-reasure of the Ranchio Rose — ^that ees 
what you have stolen. You and your fam-i-lee. 
Those reeches pay for your dress — for your ring 
there on your han’ — for all your good times, and 
to make you a la-dee. But me — I am poor that you 
and yours may be reech, Senorita Ham-mon’. The 
treasure of the Ranchio Rose belong to me and 
to my modder — not to you. Thiefs, I say!” 

Nan burst through the bushes at this juncture. 
Rhoda had uttered another cry. She was backing 
away from a girl with flushed countenance and up- 
lifted, clenched hand — a girl that Nan Sherwood 
very well remembered. 


CHAPTER XI 


JUANITA 

“Stop that! Don’t you dare strike her!” cried 
Nan, and rushed forward bravely to the rescue of 
Rhoda Hammond. 

Rhoda was bigger and stronger than Nan; but 
the latter lacked no courage, and she believed that 
her friend was so much surprised and taken aback 
by the Mexican girl’s accusation that she was not 
entirely ready to meet the personal assault which 
the stranger evidently intended. 

“Stop that!” repeated Nan, and she dashed be- 
tween the two girls. She laid her hand upon the 
Mexican’s chest and pushed her back. “You have 
no right to do this. Don’t you know we can have 
you arrested by the police?” 

“Ha! eet ees dhe odder Senorita,” gasped the 
Mexican girl. “By gracious ! I see you are 
fr-r-riends^ — heh? You know about dhe tr-r-reas- 
ure of the Ranchio Rose — ^heh?” 

“Why, she doesn’t know any more what you are 
talking about than I do,” replied Rhoda Hammond, 
in wonder. 


86 


Juanita 87 

“This girl,” said Nan, “must mean the gold and 
silver and other things you said, Rhoda, that the 
Mexican bandit hid on your father’s ranch some- 
where.” 

“Lobarto!” murmured Rhoda. 

“Dhat ees eet !” cried the Mexican girl. “Lobarto, 
dhe r-r-robber. Lobarto, dhe slayer of women and 
chil’ren! Ah! The fiend!” and the excited girl’s 
eyes blazed again. 

“But what has that to do with Rhoda and her 
father? I am sure you know very well that Mr. 
Hammond could not help that bad Mexican bandit’s 
coming up into the vicinity of Rose Ranch and hid- 
ing his plunder,” said Nan confidently. “And what 
has it all to do with you, anyway?” 

“She!” exclaimed the Mexican girl, pointing to 
Rhoda. “She ees reech because I am poor. Oh, 
yes! I know.” 

“You don’t know anything of the kind,” said 
Nan flatly. “Does she, Rhoda?” 

“I — I don’t know what she means,” stammered 
the girl from Rose Ranch. 

“I guess I understand something about it,” said 
the quicker-witted Nan. “She has been robbed by 
Lobarto, and she thinks your father has found the 
hidden treasure — the plunder Lobarto left behind 
at Rose Ranch when he was driven off six years 
ago.” 


88 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 


“You know!” exclaimed the Mexican girl confi- 
dently. “How you know?” 

“I know what you think. But that doesn’t make 
it so,” returned Nan promptly. 

“I am sure she is not right in her mind,” Rhoda 
sighed. “What could she have to do with all that 
treasure they say Lobarto stole in Mexico and hid 
on our ranch?” 

“Come over here and sit down — ^both of you,” 
commanded Nan, seeing that she had got the Mex- 
ican girl quieted for the time being. There was a 
log in the shade, and they took seats upon it. Nan 
said kindly to the Mexican: “Now, please, tell us 
quietly and calmly what you mean.” 

“Dhat Senorita Ham-mon’ ” 

“No, no! Begin at the beginning. Don’t accuse 
Rhoda any more. Let us hear all about how you 
came to know about the treasure, and why you 
think it is yours.” 

“Dhat I tell you soon,” said the girl quickly. 
“My modder an’ me ” 

“Who are you? What is your name?” asked 
Nan. 

“Juanita O’Harra.” 

“Why! that’s both Mexican and Irish,” gasped 
Nan. 

“My fader a gre’t, big Irisher-man — ^yes!” said 
Juanita. “He marry my modder in Honoragas. 


Juanita 89 

She have fine hacienda from her papa — ^yes. 
She ” 

But to put it in more understandable English, as 
Nan and Rhoda did later when they talked it over 
with Bess and Grace Mason, Juanita O’Harra told 
a very interesting — indeed, quite an exciting — story 
about Lobarto and the lost treasure the bandit chief 
had carried into the Rose Ranch region. 

Juanita's mother had married the Irish con- 
tractor who had died when the girl was small. Six 
years and more before she told this tale to the in- 
terested Nan and Rhoda, Lobarto became a scourge 
of the country about Honoragas. He attacked ha- 
ciendas, stealing and burning, even maltreating the 
helpless women and children after killing their de- 
fenders. 

After robbing the churches, he took all the wealth 
he had gathered and, with the Mexican Federal 
troops on his trail, ran up into the United States. 
How he came to grief there and had to run again 
with United States troops and the Rose Ranch cow- 
boys behind him, Rhoda had already told her 
friends. 

But that Lobarto had left all the wealth he had 
stolen somewhere near Rose Ranch, the Mexicans 
knew as well as the Americans. When captured, 
members of Lobarto’s gang had confessed. But 
they had been put to death by the Mexican authori- 


90 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

ties without telling just where the great cache of 
plunder was. 

Juanita and her mother believed that the Amer- 
ican owner of Rose Ranch had recovered the treas- 
ure and held their share from them. These Mexi- 
can people were both ignorant and suspicious. 
Juanita was very bitter against the Americanos, 
anyway. She had only come up into the States to 
work so as to support her mother, who remained 
still on the ruined plantation in Honoragas. 

‘T went to dhe Ranchio Rose,” said Juanita, “and 
see thees senorita wit’ her fader, dhe gre’t Senor 
Ham-mon'. He laugh at me — ^yes ! He tell me he 
haf not found dhe tr-r-reasure. But I know bet- 
ter ” 

“You do not know anything of the kind,” Nan 
said promptly. “You just have a bad temper and 
want to hate somebody. Rhoda tells you that she 
knows nothing about the money and jewels your 
mother lost. If they are ever found you and your 
mother shall have them.” 

“Of course,” Rhoda added, “we would not want 
anything that was not strictly ours. No matter 
what the law might say about ‘findings, keepings,’ 
my father is not that kind. I’d have you know. We 
haven’t found the treasure. If we ever do, I prom- 
ise you we’ll write to your mother at once.” 

“My modder cannot read the language you 
speak,” said Juanita, sullenly. 


Juanita 91 

“We will have the letter written in Spanish,” 
promised Rhoda. 

“Write it to me,” said the Mexican girl eagerly. 
“I must do all business for my modder. Yes. She 
do not know. She ees ver’ poor. But if what Lo- 
bar to stole from us is r-recover-red, we shall be 
reech again. By goodness, yes!” 

“In the end,” Nan explained to Bess and Grace 
afterward, “I think we more than half convinced 
that Mexican girl that it was not her mother’s 
money that dressed Rhoda so nicely.” 

“How you talk 1” exclaimed Rhoda. “I am sorry 
for that Mex. But, goodness! how mad she was. 
Just as mad as a lion !” 

“ ‘Lion’ !” sniffed Bess. “What do you know 
about lions?” 

I “We have them about Rose Ranch,” said Rhoda, 
smiling wickedly. 

“Oh, never!” squealed Grace. 

“Why, lions grow in Africa,” said Bess, doubt- 
fully. 

“More properly they are pumas, I suppose. But 
the boys call ’em lions,” laughed Rhoda. “Oh, 
there are a lot of things about Rose Ranch that will 
surprise you.” 

“Don’t say a word! I guess that is so. Some- 
thing besides the roses,” murmured Bess. 

“I shall be afraid to go out of sight of the house,” 


92 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

complained Grace, who was timid in any environ- 
ment. “Don’t tell me anything more, Rhoda.” 

Nevertheless they were all — and all the time — 
thinking of the trip West. It did not interfere with 
their standing in classes, but outside of study hours 
and the time they spent in sleep, the three girls who 
had been invited by Rhoda to visit Rose Ranch 
talked of little else. And, of course, Rhoda herself 
was always willing to talk of her home down near 
the Mexican Border, 

“I am just as sorry for that Mexican girl and 
her mother as I can be,” Rhoda said on one oc- 
casion. “I’ve written daddy about it. I expect he 
doesn’t remember Mrs. O’Harra’s coming to Rose 
Ranch with her daughter about the treasure. You 
know, that old treasure has made us a lot of 
trouble.” 

“I suppose people keep coming up from Mexico 
looking for it?” suggested Grace. 

“Most of them think we have benefited by Lo- 
barto’s stealings,” sighed Rhoda. “You see, there 
is much hard feeling on the side of the Mexicans 
against the Americans. Even the Mexicans born 
on our side of the Border are not really Americans. 
They never learn to speak much English, and it 
makes them clannish and suspicious of English 
speaking people.” 

“And how fierce they are!” murmured Nan. 


Juanita 93 

“Juanita would have struck you. Scratched your 
face, maybe.” 

“Well, that is only their excitable way. Perhaps 
she did not really intend to strike me,” Rhoda said. 
“I do wish we could help her and her mother. 
Somehow, I am sorry for the poor thing.” 

“Let’s get up a searching party when we get to 
Rose Ranch,” said Bess excitedly, “and find that 
old treasure,” 

“Wouldn’t that be great!” Nan agreed. “But I 
am afraid if after six years all that plunder hasn’t 
been found, we shouldn’t be likely to find it.” 

“Oh, it’s been searched for,” Rhoda assured them. 
“Time and time again. There have been as many 
men who believed they could find it as ever hunted 
for the old Pegleg Mine' — ^and that is famous.” 

“Never say die!” said Bess, nodding her curly 
head. “I’m going to hunt for it myself.” 

This raised a laugh; yet every member of the 
little party, including Walter when he heard the par- 
ticulars about Juanita, was eagerly interested in 
the mystery of the treasure of Rose Ranch. 


CHAPTER XII 


ROSE RANCH AT LAST 

The closing of school came at length. Bess had 
said frankly that she feared it never would come, 
the time seemed to pass so slowly; but Nan only 
laughed at her. 

“Do you think something has happened to the 
‘wheels of Time’ we read about in class the other 
day?’’ she asked her chum. 

“Well, it does seem,” said merry Bess, “as though 
somebody must have stuck a stick in the cogs of 
those wheels, and stopped ’em !” 

Both Tillbury girls stood well in their classes; 
and they were liked by all the instructors — even by 
Professor Krenner, who some of the girls declared 
wickedly was the school’s “self-starter, Lakeview 
Hall being altogether too modern to have a crank.” 

In association with their fellow pupils. Nan and 
Bess had never any real difficulty, save with 
Linda Riggs and her clique. But this term Linda 
had not behaved as she had during the fall and 
winter semester. This change was partly be- 
cause of her chum, Cora Courtney. Cora would 
94 


Rose Ranch at Last 95 

not shut herself away from the other girls just 
to please Linda. 

Linda had even begun to try to cultivate the 
acquaintance of Rhoda Hammond — especially 
when she had heard more about Rose Ranch. But 
Rhoda refused to yield to the blandishments of 
the railroad magnate’s daughter. 

“I suppose it might be good fun to take a trip 
across the continent to your part of the country,” 
Linda said to the Western girl on one occasion. 
“You get up such a party, Rhoda, and I’ll tease 
father for his private car, and we will go across in 
style.” 

“Thank you,” said Rhoda simply. “I prefer to 
pay my own way.” 

“No use for Linda to try to ‘horn in’ — isn’t that 
the Westernism — to our crowd,” laughed Bess, when 
she heard of this. “The ‘Riggs Disease’ is not go- 
ing to afflict us this summer, I should hope 1” 

Cora Courtney, too, had tried to cultivate an ac- 
quaintance with Rhoda. But the girl from Rose 
Ranch made friends slowly. Too many of the girls 
had ignored her when she first came to Lakeview 
Hall for Rhoda easily to forget, if she did forgive. 

The good-bys on the broad veranda of Lakeview 
Hall were far more lingering than they had been 
at Christmas time. The girls were separating for 
nearly three months — and they scattered like sparks 
from a bonfire, in all directions. 


96 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

A goodly company started with the Tillbury 
chums from the Freeling station ; but at each junc- 
tion there were further separations until, when the 
time came for the porter to make up the berths, 
there were only Nan, Bess and Rhoda of all their 
crowd in the Pullman car. Even Grace and Wal- 
ter had changed for a more direct route to Chicago. 

They awoke in the morning to find their coach 
sidetracked at Tillbury and everybody hurrying to 
get into the washrooms. Nan could scarcely wait 
to tidy herself and properly dress, for there was 
Papa Sherwood in a great, new, beautiful touring 
car — one of those, in fact, that he kept for demon- 
stration purposes. 

Nan dragged Rhoda with her, while Bess ran 
merrily to meet what she called “a whole nest of 
Harley larks” in another car on the other side of 
the station. It had been determined that Rhoda 
should go home with Nan. 

“Here she is. Papa Sherwood !” cried Nan, leap- 
ing into the front of the big car to “get a strangle 
hold” around her father’s neck. “This is our girl 
from Rose Ranch, Rhoda Hammond. Isn’t she 
nice?” 

“I — I can’t see her. Nan,” said her father. 
“Whew! let me get my breath and my eyesight 
back.” 

Then he welcomed Rhoda, and both girls got into 


Rose Ranch at Last 97 

the tonneau to ride to the Sherwood cottage. “Such 
richness!” Nan sighed. 

The little cottage in amity looked just as cozy and 
homelike as ever. Nothing had been changed there 
save that the house had been newly painted. As the 
car came to a halt, the front door opened with a 
bang and a tiny figure shot out of it, down the walk, 
and through the gateway to meet Nan Sherwood as 
she stepped down from the automobile. 

“My Nan! My Nan!” shrieked Inez, and the 
half wild little creature flung herself into the bigger 
girl’s arms. “Come in and see how nice I’ve kept 
your mamma. I’ve learned to brush her hair just as 
you used to brush it. I’m going to be every bit 
like you when I get big. Come on in !” 

With this sort of welcome Nan Sherwood could 
scarcely do less than enjoy herself during the week 
they remained in Tillbury. Inez, the waif, had be- 
come Inez, the home-body. She was the dearest 
little maid, so Momsey said, that ever was. And 
how happy she appeared to be! 

Her old worry of mind about the possibility of 
“three square meals” a day and somebody who did 
not beat her too much, seemed to have been forgot- 
ten by little Inez. The kindly oversight of Mrs. 
Sherwood was making a loving, well-bred little girl 
of the odd creature whom Nan and Bess had first 
met selling flowers on the wintry streets of Chi- 
cago. Of course, during that week at home, the 


98 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

three girls from Lakeview Hall did not sit down 
and fold their hands. No, indeed! Bess Harley 
gave a big party at her house; and there were au- 
tomobile rides, and boating parties, and a picnic. 
It was a very busy time. 

“We scarcely know whether we have had you 
with us or not. Nan dear,” said her mother. “But 
I suppose Rhoda wants to get home and see her 
folks, too; so we must not delay your journey. 
When you come back, however, mother wants her 
daughter to herself for a little while. We have 
been separated so much that I am not sure the fair- 
ies have not sent a changeling to me!” and she 
laughed. 

At that, for it was not a hearty laugh and Horn- 
sey’s eyes glistened, if Nan had not given her prom- 
ise, “black and blue,” to Rhoda, she would have 
excused herself and not gone to Rose Ranch at all. 
She knew that Momsey was lonely. 

But Mrs. Sherwood did not mean to spoil her 
daughter’s enjoyment. And the opportunity to see 
this distant part of the country was too good to 
be neglected. Nan might never again have such a 
chance to go West. 

So the three girls were sent off without any tears 
for the rendezvous with the Masons and Mrs. Jane- 
way at Chicago. 

They found Grace and Walter all right; but as 
the Masons had no idea what Mrs. Janeway looked 


Rose Ranch at Last 


99 

like, and that lady had no description of the Ma- 
sons, they had not met. Rhoda had to look up 
her mother’s friend. 

“What are you going to do, Rhoda?” asked the 
bubbling Bess. “Track her down as you would an 
Indian? Look for signs ?” 

“I don’t believe in signs,” responded Rhoda. “I 
am going to look for the best dressed woman in 
Chicago. Such lovely clothes as she wears !” 

“I guess that must be so,” said Grace as Rhoda 
walked out of ear-shot, “for Mrs. Janeway chose 
Rhoda’s own outfit, and you know there wasn’t a 
better dressed girl at Lakeview.” 

“Wow!” murmured her brother. “What a long 
tale about dress! Don’t you girls ever think of 
anything but what you put on?” 

“Oh, yes, sir,” declared Bess smartly. “And you 
know that Rhoda thinks less about what she wears 
than most. It’s lucky her mother had somebody 
she could trust to dress her daughter before she ap- 
peared at the Hall.” 

“All on the surface ! All on the surface !” grum- 
bled Walter. 

“Goodness, Walter,” said his sister, “would you 
want us to swallow our dresses? Of course they 
are on the surface.” 

“It certainly is a fact,” grinned Walter impu- 
dently, “that the curriculum of Lakeview Hall 
makes its pupils wondrous sharp. Hullo! here 


loo Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

comes Rhoda towing a very nice looking lady, I 
must admit.” 

In fact, at first sight the three other girls fell in 
love with Mrs. Janeway. She was a childless and 
wealthy widow, who, as she asserted, “just doted 
on girls.” She met them all warmly. 

“I hope,” said Walter, with gravity, as she shook 
hands with him, “that a mere boy may find favor in 
your eyes, too. Really, we’re not all savages. 
Some of us are more or less civilized.” 

“Well,” Mrs. Janeway sighed, but with twinkling 
eyes, “I shall see how well you behave. Now, for 
our tickets.” 

“I have the reservations,” Walter said quietly. 
“A stateroom for you four ladies and a berth for 
me in the same car. In half an hour we pull out. 
And, girls !” 

“Say it,” returned Bess. 

“Is it something nice, Walter?” asked his sis- 
ter. 

“There is an observation platform on our car 
— the end car on the train. It goes all the way 
through to Osaka, where we are going. I think 
we are fixed just right.” 

This proved to be the case. The young people 
pretty nearly lived on that rear platform, for the 
weather remained pleasant all through the jour- 
ney. Mrs. Janeway sometimes found it hard work 
to get them in to go to bed. 


Rose Ranch at Last loi 

The route this tourist car took was rather round- 
about; but as Walter said, it landed them at the 
Osaka station, the nearest railroad point to Rose 
Ranch, in something like five days. 

By this time they were getting a little weary of 
traveling by rail. Walter declared he was “saddle- 
sore” from sitting so much. When long lines of 
corrals and cattle-pens came in sight, Rhoda told 
them they were nearing Osaka. 

“Why, there are miles and miles of those cor- 
rals !” cried Bess, in wonder. “You don’t mean to 
say they are all for your father’s cattle?” 

“Oh, no, my dear. Several ranchers ship from 
Osaka,” explained Rhoda. “And as we all ship at 
about the same season, there must be plenty of pens 
and cattle-chutes. Hurry, now. Get your things 
together.” 

Bess scrabbled her baggage together, as usual 
leaving a good deal of it for somebody else to bring. 
This time it was Walter who gathered up her be- 
longings rather than Nan. 

“I never do know what I do with things,” sighed 
Bess. “When I start on a journey I have so few ; 
and when I arrive at my destination it does seem 
as though I am always in possession of much more 
than my share. Thank you, Walter,” she con- 
cluded demurely. “I think boys are awfully nice 
to have around.” 

“In that case,” said Rhoda, leading the way out 


102 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

of the car as the train slowed down, “you are going 
to have plenty of boys to wait on you when you get 
to Rose Ranch. Those punchers are just dying for 
feminine ‘scenery.’ I know Ike Bemis once said 
that he often felt like draping a blanket on an old 
cow and asking her for a dance.” 

“The idea!” gasped Mrs. Janeway, who was like- 
wise making her first visit to the ranges. 

At that moment Rhoda cried: 

“There he is I There’s Hess with the ponies.” 

“Hess who?” asked Grace. 

“Hess what?” demanded Nan, as the train 
stopped and the colored porter quickly set his stool 
at the foot of the car steps. 

“Hesitation Kane,” explained Rhoda, hurrying 
ahead. ‘“Come on, folks! Oh, I am glad to get 
home !” 

Bess, who was last, save Walter, to reach the sta- 
tion platform, gave one comprehensive glance 
around the barren place. 

“Well !” she said. “If this is home ” 

“ ‘Home was never like this,’ ” chuckled Walter. 

A few board shacks, the station itself unpainted, 
sagebrush and patches of alkali here and there, and 
an endless trail leading out across a vista of flat 
land that seemed horizonless. The train steamed 
away, having halted but a moment. To all but 
Rhoda the scene was like something unreal. 


Rose Ranch at Last 


103 

“My goodness!” murmured Grace, “even the 
moving pictures didn’t show anything like this.” 

“They say the desert scenes made by some of the 
movie companies are photographed at Coney Is- 
land. And I guess it’s true,” said Walter. 

Rhoda had run across the tracks toward where a 
two-seated buckboard, drawn by a pair of eager 
ponies, was standing. Beside it stood two saddle 
horses, their heads drooping and their reins trail- 
ing before them in the dust. The man who drove 
the ponies wore a huge straw sombrero of Mexican 
manufacture. When he turned to look at his em- 
ployer’s daughter the others saw a very solemn and 
sunburned visage. 

“Oh, Hess!” cried Rhoda. “How are you? Is 
mother all right?” 

The man stared unblinkingly at her and his facial 
muscles never moved. He was thin-lipped, and his 
hawk nose made a high barrier between his eyes. 
He did not seem unpleasant, only naturally grim. 
And silent ! Well, that word scarcely indicated the 
character of Mr. Hesitation Kane. 

“Come on!” shouted Rhoda, looking back at her 
friends, and evidently not at all surprised that the 
driver of the buckboard did not at once reply to 
her questions. “Mrs. Janeway, and Nan, and Bess, 
and Gracie — ^you all crowd into the buckboard. Wal- 
ter and I are going to ride. Got my duds here, 
Hess?” 


104 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

It was lucky Mr. Kane did not have to answer 
verbally. He thrust forward a bundle. Rhoda 
seized it and started for the station where there was 
a room in which she could change her clothes. Be- 
fore she quite reached the platform the driver spoke 
his first word: 

“Thanky, Miss Rhody. I’m fine.” 

Rhoda nodded over her shoulder, laughing at the 
surprise and amusement of her friends, and disap- 
peared. Walter helped the girls and Mrs. Janeway 
into the odd though comfortable vehicle. In a few 
moments Rhoda reappeared in a rough costume that 
even Mrs. Janeway had to admit did not make the 
Western girl any the less attractive. 

The full breeches and long coat and leggings gave 
her every freedom of action, and she had put 
on a wide-brimmed hat. Meanwhile Walter had 
brought forth from one of his bags a pair of leather 
riding leggings and buckled on small spurs. He 
had been forewarned of this ride by Rhoda before 
they left Chicago. 

They mounted the two ponies, and the driver of 
the buckboard lifted his reins. Then he pulled the 
eager ponies to a stop again and turned toward 
Rhoda, answering her second question. 

“Yes, ma’am, your mother’s fine. She’s fine,” he 
announced. 

“Don’t that beat all!” exclaimed Walter, explod- 
ing with laughter as he cantered by Rhoda’s side. 


Rose Ranch at Last 105 

“That is why we call him ‘Hesitation,’ ” Rhoda 
said. 

“Somebody taught him to count more than ten 
before speaking, didn’t they?” commented Walter. 

The trail was not wide enough for the pony rid- 
ers to keep their mounts beside the buckboard ; be- 
sides, the dust would have smothered Rhoda and 
Walter. The light breeze carried the dust off the 
trail, however; so the two riders cpuld keep within 
shouting distance of the others. 

In two hours or a little more they were out of 
the barren lands completely. Swerving down an 
arroyo, all green and lush at the bottom, they can- 
tered up into the mouth of a broad gulch, the walls 
of which later became so steep that it might well be 
called a canon. 

The ponies never walked — up grade, or down. 
They cantered or galloped. Hesitation Kane never 
spoke to them; but they seemed to know just what 
he wanted them to do by the way he used the reins 
— and they did it. 

“I don’t see how he does it,” said Walter to 
Rhoda. “It doesn’t seem really possible that one 
could make a horse understand without speech.” 

“Oh, he can speak to them if it is necessary. But 
he says it isn’t often necessary to speak to a horse. 
The less you talk to them the better trained they 
are. And Hess is daddy’s boss wrangler.” 
“‘Wrangler’?” 


io6 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

“Horse wrangler. Horse trainer, that means.” 

“But, my goodness !” chuckled Walter, “ ‘to 
wrangle’ certainly means quarreling in speech. I 
should think it was almost like a Quaker meeting 
when this Mr. Kane trains a pony.” 

“It is a fact,” laughed Rhoda, “that the ponies 
make much more noise than Hesitation does.” 

As they entered this deeper gulch, the girls cried 
out in delight. The trail was narrow and grassy. 
Growing right up to the path — so that they could 
stretch out their hands and pick them — were acres 
and acres of wild roses. They scented the air and 
charmed the eye for miles and miles along the trail. 

They rode on and on. Finally the little cavalcade 
wound out of the gap, down a slope, crossed a tum- 
bling river that was yards broad but not very deep, 
and the ponies quickened their pace as they mounted 
again to a higher plain. 

“There it is!” shouted Rhoda, and, waving her 
hat, she spurred her pony ahead and passed the 
buckboard at full speed. 

On a knoll the others saw a low-roofed, but wide- 
spreading, bungalow sort of structure, with corrals 
and sheds beyond. The latter were bare and ugly 
enough; but the ranch house was almost covered 
to the eaves with, climbing roses in luxurious bloom. 


CHAPTER XIII 


OPEN SPACES 

“Oh, Nan!” cried Bess, squeezing her chum’s 
arm, “what do you think of it?” 

“It is more beautiful than I had any idea of! 
And Rhoda had to come away from all this just 
to go to school,” answered the equally excited Nan. 

Here Grace Mason’s usual timidity showed it- 
self, as she said: 

“But there is so much of it! We must have 
come twenty miles from the railroad station.” 

“More than that,” put in her brother, from his 
seat in the saddle. 

“I don’t care !” cried Bess. “It’s wonderful.” 

“Oh, it is wonderful, I grant you,” said Grace. 
“But — ^but everything is so big — and open — and 
lonesome.” 

“Cheer up. Sis,” said Walter. “We are all here 
to keep you company, to say nothing of the cows 
and the horses,” and he laughed. 

Mrs. Janeway’s opinion was practical to say the 
least, for her first words were, as the buckboard 
reached the house : 

107 


io8 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

“I certainly shall be glad to get a bath.” 

Rhoda had thrown herself from her pony and 
rushed up the steps of the veranda to greet two 
persons who, later, the visitors found were Mr. and 
Mrs. Hammond. The former was a rather heav- 
ily built, shaggy-bearded man, his face burned to 
a brick-red and such part as the beard did not hide 
covered with fine lines like a veil. His wife was 
a tall and graceful woman who showed nothing in 
her clear, wide-open eyes of her blindness which for 
so many years had set her apart from other people. 

The blind woman stepped with assurance to the 
edge of the veranda to greet the visitors, and it was 
Mrs. Janeway she first met and embraced. 

“Marian Janeway ! How I wish I could see you, 
to know if you have really changed!” cried Mrs. 
Hammond in the heartiest and most cheerful voice 
imaginable. It was easy to see from whom Rhoda 
had got her voice. 

“I’ve grown fat — I can tell you that,” sighed the 
Chicago woman. “And you — why, you are still as 
graceful as you were when you were a girl.” 

“Flatterer!” exclaimed Rhoda’s mother, laugh- 
ing. Then she seized upon Nan who chanced to 
come up the steps directly behind Mrs. Janeway. 

“Who is this?” she cried. “Wait!” Her fingers 
ran quickly but lightly over Nan’s countenance. 
She even felt her ears, and the hair where it fluffed 
over her brow, and traced the line of her well 


109 


Open Spaces 

marked eyebrows. “Why!” she added with deci- 
sion, “this is Nan Sherwood that I have heard so 
much about.” 

“Oh, Mrs. Hammond,” gasped the girl, “how; 
did you know?” 

She looked up into the shining face of the blind 
woman and could scarcely believe that she was 
so afflicted. Mrs. Hammond’s laugh was deep- 
throated and hearty, like Rhoda’s own. 

“I know you, my dear, because Rhoda has told 
me so much about you. She has explained your 
character, I see, very truthfully. Your features 
bear out all she has said. You see, my dear, I am 
a witch!” and she kissed Nan warmly. 

She welcomed the others with grace and that 
wide hospitality which is only found, perhaps, in 
the West and among people of the great outdoors. 
It arises from old times, when the wanderer, see- 
ing a campfire, was sure of a welcome if he ap- 
proached, and a welcome without questioning. 

Mr. Hammond was equally glad to see the young 
folk. He spoke with a pleasant drawl, and aside 
from his gray hair and beard revealed few marks 
of age. His vigorous frame carried too much 
flesh, perhaps; but that was, he said, “because he 
took it easy and let the boys run things to suit them- 
selves.” 

This last statement, however. Nan, who was ob- 
servant, took with the proverbial pinch of salt. 


no Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

The expression of his countenance was kindly, but 
his character was firm and he spoke at times with a 
decision that made the servants, for instance, hurry 
to obey him. He was, indeed, a very forceful man ; 
but Nan Sherwood liked him immensely. 

The rambling ranch house covered a deal of 
ground and was two stories high. The rooms were 
low-ceilinged, the upper rooms especially so. The 
girls who had come to visit Rhoda had a big, plainly 
furnished, airy room on the upper floor, beside 
Rhoda’s own chamber. Walter had his choice of 
a bed or a hammock in a room across the hall. The 
adults of the household were disposed below, while 
the servants occupied quarters away from the main 
dwelling. 

There was a water system which afforded plenty 
of baths, the clank of the pump being heard in a 
steady murmur from somewhere behind the house. 
It was too late, when they were freshened after the 
ride, for any exploration outside the house on this 
evening. All the visitors were ready for dinner 
when the Mexican waiter announced it. 

The servants included a Chinese cook, Mexican 
houseboys, and ^groes for the outside work. The 
life at Rose Ranch was evidently a rather free and 
easy existence. The standards of etiquette were 
not just the same as at the Mason house in Chi- 
cago; but the Hammonds knew well how to make 
their guests feel at home. The quality of the hos- 


Open Spaces 1 1 1 

pitality of the ranchman and his wife was not 
strained. 

The party lingered long at dinner, under the glow 
of a hanging lamp that illuminated the table but 
left the corners and sides of the great room in 
shadow. Now and then somebody would lounge 
in at the doorway and speak to Mr. Hammond. 

“Ah say, Boss, where’d you say Dan’s outfit was 
goin’? I plumb forgot.” 

“You’d forget your head, Carey, if it wasn’t 
screwed on tight,” declared the ranchman, without 
glancing at the big figure slouching in the doorway. 
“Dan and his bunch light out for Beller’s Gulch 
come mornin’.” 

A little later it was a lighter step, and the jingle 
of spurs on the veranda floor. 

“Tumbleweed done sprung his knee. Mist’ Ham- 
mon’. Kyan’t use him nohow fo’ a while.” 

“My lawsy!” ejaculated Rhoda’s father, “seems 
to me most of you fellers ain’t fitted to take care of 
a saw horse, let alone a sure enough pony. Some 
of you will have to ride mules if you don’t stop 
ruinin’ my horseflesh.” 

“Wal, Tumbleweed is right fidgety,” complained 
the cowboy. 

“What do you want to ride — somethin’ broke to 
a side-saddle?” demanded the ranchman in disgust. 
“Go rope a new pony out of that band Hesitation’s 
just brought up. And be mighty careful not to 


1 12 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 


get an outlaw. Hess says there’s two or three in 
that band that are fresh out of the hills.” 

These side remarks excited Walter. The girls, 
too, were interested. Grace said she hoped there 
was not any horse as bad as the pony that ran away 
at Lakeview, and which Rhoda had stopped so dex- 
terously. 

“My dear!’* laughed Rhoda, “that wasn’t a bad 
pony. She was only frisky. But Hess shall find 
you a perfectly safe mount.” 

“I hope you will extend that promise to me,” said 
Nan, laughing. “If I am to ride I want something 
I can stay on.” 

“No bucking broncos for me, either,” cried Bess. 
“At least, not until I have learned to ride better 
than I do at present.” 

They went to bed that night wearied after trav- 
eling so far, but much excited as to what the next 
day would bring forth. 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE POOR LITTLE CALF 

Nan awoke when it was still utterly dark. Noth- 
ing had frightened her, and yet she felt that some- 
thing really important was about to happen — some- 
thing wonderful! What it could be, she had no 
idea. Her imagination was not at all spurring her 
mind. She only knew that she was on the verge 
of a new and surprising experience. 

There were three beds in the big room, and she 
could hear Bess and Grace breathing calmly in their 
own cots. But she was wide awake. 

Without speaking, or making any more sound 
than she could help. Nan Sherwood crept out of 
bed. The air from the open windows was chill, 
so she knew it must be near dawn. 

She slipped her feet into slippers and shrugged 
her robe about her. Then she crept to the nearest 
casement. She had to kneel to see out, for the 
window, which looked to the east, was under the 
eaves of the ranch house. The sill was only a foot 
above the floor. 

Nan folded her arms on this sill and looked out 


1 14 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

into the velvety darkness. A great silence seemed 
to brood over the country which she could not see. 
She remembered how lonely the ranch house seemed 
to be when she had first seen it the previous after- 
noon. Even the bunk houses where the help slept 
were at some distance, and not in this easterly 
direction. 

Blackness seemed to have shut down all about the 
great dwelling, like a curtain. The roses weighted 
the air with their delicious scent. She even had to 
reach forth and separate the prickly vines carefully 
so as to make an opening through which she hoped 
soon to see. 

For she knew now what it was that had awakened 
her — what it was that was about to happen. Dawn 
was coming ! The sun would soon appear ! A new 
day was in the making just below the horizon which 
she could not see. 

A haze had been drawn over the stars ; therefore 
there was absolutely no light in the world. Not 
yet. But 

There it was! A pale gray streak was drawn 
along the very edge of the world, far, far away. 
It was just as though a brushful of gray paint had 
been dashed along that line where the earth and the 
sky met. 

The gray line remained, though growing more 
distinct, while above it a band of faint pink rimmed 
the east as far as she could see. Nan drew her 


The Poor Little Calf 


“5 

kimono about her shoulders and shivered ecstatical- 
ly. This was the wonderful thing that she had 
awakened with in her mind. 

Sunrise ! 

A gun could have shot the earth away out there 
across the rolling plain no more suddenly with 
yellow than now was done by the sun’s reflection. 
It had not come into sight yet; but Nan could see 
the colors reaching upward toward the zenith. A 
riot of color hurried everywhere, over the earth and 
up in the sky; and then 

“There he is!” shouted Nan aloud, as the edge 
of a fiery red ball appeared. 

“What is the matter with you. Nan Sherwood?” 
complained Bess, from her bed. 

“Oh, what is it? Nan!” shrieked Grace, sitting 
straight up in bed and evidently expecting that the 
very worst had happened. 

“It’s morning, you lazy- things,” whispered Nan. 
“Sh ! Get up and see the most wonderful sight you 
ever did see.” 

“I bet the sun is getting up in the west,” gasped 
Bess, hopping out of bed at this announcement. 

Already there was a stir about the place. Down 
at the bunk houses the dogs began to yap and some 
full-throated cow-puncher sent forth a “Yee! Yee! 
Yee! Yip!” that acted as rising call for all the 
hands. As the three girls from so much farther 
east gathered at the low window to peer out, there 


ii6 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

sounded another cowboy salute and there dashed 
by with the drumming of hoofs a little party of 
mounted men who rode just as the cowboys do in 
the moving pictures. 

Rhoda burst into the room and ran to hug her 
three friends. She was already dressed. 

“There goes Dan’s bunch already,” she said. 
“And see ’em turn and look back. They’re just 
showing off ; they know we sleep on this side of the 
house. Daddy will give them a wigging, for maybe 
Mrs. Janeway wants to sleep.” 

Breakfast was an early repast at Rose Ranch. 
Mrs. Hammond and Mrs. Janeway were served in 
their rooms; but the rest of the family were soon 
at the table. It was a bountiful repast, with Ah 
Foon, the Chinese cook, coming to the door every 
few minutes to see for himself if the flapjack plates 
did not need replenishing. 

“We are going to get our ponies first of all,” 
Rhoda announced. “Oh ! I am so hungry for a ride 
— a good ride — again.” 

“But, goodness! don’t we have to be fitted to 
them ?” demanded Bess, the incorrigible. “I would 
not like to walk right up to a pony and say ‘You’re 
mine!’ — just like that!” 

“Hess will pick them out for us, won’t he, 
Daddy?” 

“I reckon so,” said her father, without looking up 


The Poor Little Calf 


117 

from his mail that one of the Mexicans had brought 
in the minute before. 

“Goodness!” exclaimed Grace. “We’ll never be 
able to get the ponies to-day, then, that is sure. He 
won’t be able to answer you so quickly.” 

“That’s all right,” laughed Rhoda. “I asked him 
about them last night.” 

They ran out to the corral as soon as the girls 
got into their new riding habits. They had had 
them made something like Rhoda’s. 

“You see,” the latter had said, “our ponies are not 
often trained for side-saddles and skirts. And, 
then, they are dangerous.” 

The silent Hesitation was on hand. He had a 
bunch of ponies gathered in a particular corral, 
and pointed to them in answer to Rhoda when she 
asked if they were perfectly safe. About the time 
the girls and Walter had looked them over and 
chosen those they liked, the horse wrangler said; 

“All broke for tenderfoots. You can trust any 
of ’em as long as you keep your eyes open.” 

“Well,” murmured Bess, “I certainly do not in- 
tend to ride horseback when I am asleep.” 

Nan chose for herself a cunning little fat pony, 
with brown and white patches and a pink nose. In 
the East it would have been called a calico pony; 
but Rhoda called it a pinto. 

The Eastern girls were just a little doubtful of 
their mounts., because their tails and ears were al- 


ii8 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

ways twitching and they seemed quite unable to 
“make theii feet behave.” 

“Mine is just as nervous as I am,” confessed 
Bess, as she gathered up the reins. “If he starts as 
quick as Walter’s does, I know I shall be thrown as 
high as the cow jumped — over the moon.” 

“Have no fear, Elizabeth,” advised Nan. “Try 
to copy Rhoda, and you’ll stick on all right.” 

“Oh, I’ll be a regular copy-cat,” promised her 
chum. “I don’t wish to be carried back to Till- 
bury in pieces.” 

The little cavalcade started off from the corrals 
in good order. They went past the house and 
waved their hands to Mrs. Janeway and shouted a 
greeting to Rhoda’s mother. Then the ranch girl 
led them at a fast canter toward the west. 

When Walter saw the small rifle tucked into a 
case under Rhoda’s knee he expressed the wish that 
he had brought his own rifle West. 

“Do you know, I never thought of it! You’re 
not expecting to shoot Indians, are you, Rhoda?” 
he said jokingly. 

“You never can tell,” she replied, smiling. “But 
they say I am a pretty good shot. I don’t expect 
to shoot an Indian.” 

“I can shoot, too,” said Grace quickly. “Walter 
taught me last year.” 

“Mercy! what did you shoot with, Grace?” de-* 
manded Bess. “A squirt-gun?” 


The Poor Little Calf 


1 19 

“A pistol and Walter’s rifle. I knovir I’m awfully 
scared of ’em, but I wanted to know which was the 
more dangerous end of a gun.” 

“Bravo !” cried Nan, laughing. 

“Why, if you want, I can supply you all with fire- 
arms,” said Rhoda. “There are plenty at the ranch. 
And the boys most always lug around a ‘gat.,’ as 
they call ’em, because of the coyotes.” 

“Oh, dear me! are they dangerous?” demanded 
Grace. 

“The coyotes? Only to stray calves and lame 
cattle. We seldom see anything more dangerous. 
And as long as you are on horseback you are per- 
fectly safe, anyway, even from a lion.” 

“There she goes talking about lions again,” mur- 
mured Bess. “I feel as though I were on the 
African veldt.” 

“Let’s all learn how to use firearms,” said Nan 
eagerly. “Why shouldn’t we?” 

“Why, Nan Sherwood I you have the instincts of 
a desperado,” declared her chum. “I can see that.” 

“I want to do just as the Western girls do while 
I am here,” said Nan. 

“So I, I presume,” Rhoda queried, “should 
wish to do just as the Eastern girls do when I am 
at Lakeview?” 

‘Well, you’d get along better,” Nan argued, quite 
seriously. 

Out of sight of the ranch house they very quick- 


120 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

ly found themselves in what seemed to the visitors 
a pathless plain. Off to the left a huge herd of 
red and white cattle was feeding. It was broken 
up into little groups and the creatures looked no 
more harmful than cows back home. There was 
not a herdsman in sight. 

“Why,” said Bess, “I expected to see cowboys 
riding around and around the cattle all the time, jmd 
hear them singing songs.” 

“They do do that at night. The riding, anyway. 
And most of the boys try to sing. It takes up time 
and keeps ’em from being lonely,” replied Rhoda. 
“But I am not sure that the cows are fond of the 
singing. They are patient creatures, however, and 
endure a good deal.” 

“Now, Rhoda!” exclaimed Nan, “don’t squash 
all our beliefs about the cowpunching industry which 
we have learned from nursery books and movies.” 

Rhoda headed away from the herd, and by and 
by they descended a steep but grassy slope into the 
mouth of a rock-walled canon. It was a wild-look- 
ing place; but there were clumps of roses growing 
here and there. Rhoda leaped down and let her 
pony stand, with the reins trailing before him on 
the ground. 

“Isn’t he cunning!” observed Bess. “He thinks 
he’s hitched.” 

“They are trained that way. You see, on the 


The Poor Little Calf ii2i 

plains there are so few hitching posts,” said Rhoda 
dryly. 

The others dismounted, too. Rhoda was hunting 
among the great bowlders that littered the grassy 
bottom. When they asked her what she was look- 
ing for, she called back that she would show them 
a boiling spring if she could find it. 

Suddenly Nan lifted her head to listen. Then 
she started up the canon, which, in that direction, 
grew narrower between the walls. 

“Don’t you hear that calf bawling?” she de- 
manded, when Bess asked her where she was going. 

“Oh, I hear it,” said Bess, keeping in the rear. 
“But how do you know it is a calf?” 

“Then it is something imitating one very closely,” 
sniffed Nan, and kept on. The next minute she 
shouted back: “It is! A little, cunning, red calf. 
And, oh, Bess ! it has hurt its leg.” 

She ran forward. Bess followed with more cau- 
tion. Suddenly there was a crash in the bushes, 
and out into the open, right beside the injured calf, 
came a red and white cow. This animal bawled 
loudly and charged for a few yards directly toward 
Nan Sherwood. 

“Oh, goodness, Nani Come away!” begged 
Bess, turning to run. “That old cow will bite 
you.” 

But it was not the anxious mother of the calf 
that had startled Nan. She knew she could dodge 


122 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

the cow. But aSove the place where the calf lay, 
on a great gray rock that gave it a commanding 
position, the girl saw a huge, cat-dike creature with 
glaring eyes and a switching tail. 

She had never seen a puma, not even in a 
menagerie. But she could not mistake the slate 
and fawn colored body, the cocked ears, the brist- 
ling whiskers, and the distended claws, the latter 
working just like a cat’s when the latter is about to 
make a charge. 

And it looked as though the savage beast could 
quite overleap the cow and calf and almost reach 
Nan Sherwood’s feet. 


CHAPTER XV 


A TROPHY FOR ROOM EIGHT 

Nan was badly frightened. But she had once 
faced a lynx up at Pine Camp, and had come off 
without a scratch. Now she realized that this 
mountain lion had much less reason for attacking 
her than had the lynx of the Michigan woods ; for 
the latter had had kittens to defend. 

The huge puma on the rock glared at her, flexed 
his shoulder muscles, and opening his red mouth, 
spit just like the great cat he was. Really, he was 
much more interested in the bleating red calf than 
he was in the girl who was transfixed for the mo- 
ment in her tracks, 

Bess, who could not see the puma, kept calling 
to Nan to look out for the cow. She was more in 
fun than anything else, for she did not believe the 
cow could catch her chum if the latter ran back. 

What amazed Bess Harley was the fact that Nan 
stood so long by the clump of brush which hid the 
rock on which the puma crouched from Bess’s eyes. 

“What is the matter with you?” gasped Bess at 
last. “You look like Lot’s wife, though you are 
123 


124 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

too sweet ever to turn to salt, my dear. Come on !” 

Then, of a sudden, Bess heard the big cat spit! 
“My goodness!’ she shrieked, “what is that?” 

Her cry was heard by Rhoda, at a distance. The 
Western girl knew that something untoward was 
taking place. She ran for her pony and leaped into 
the saddle. 

“What is it?” she shouted to Bess, whom she 
could see from horseback. 

“Nan’s found a red calf — and he makes the queer- 
est noise,” declared the amazed Bess. “I’m afraid 
of that calf.” 

Walter ran to mount his pony, too. But Rhoda 
spurred directly toward the spot where Bess stood. 
Being in the saddle, she was so much higher than 
Nan’s chum that she could see right over the brush 
clump. Immediately she beheld Nan and the 
crouching lion. 

“Come back. Nan!” she called quickly. “Stoop!” 

She snatched the rifle from under her knee. It 
leaped to her shoulder, and, standing up in her stir- 
rups while her pony stood quivering and snorting, 
for he had smelled the puma, the girl of Rose Ranch 
took quick but unerring aim at the crouching, slate- 
colored body on the bowlder. 

The beast was about to spring. Indeed, he did 
leap into the air. But that was the reflex of his 
muscles after the bullet from Rhoda’s rifle struck 
him. 


A Trophy for Room Eight 125 

She had come up so that her sight had been most 
deadly — ^right behind the fore shoulder. The ball 
entered there, split the beast’s heart, and came out of 
his chest. He tumbled to the ground, kicking a bit, 
but quite dead before he landed. 

“There !” exclaimed Rhoda, “I warrant that’s the 
lion daddy was speaking to Steve about last night. 
He said it wasn’t coyotes that killed all the strays. 
He had seen the tracks of this fellow in the hills.’’ 

“Rhoda!” shrieked Bess, “is that a lion?” 

“Most certainly, my dear.” 

“Hold me, somebody! I want to faint,” gasped 
Bess. “And he almost jumped right down our 
Nan’s throat.” 

“No,” said Nan. “Scared as I was, I knew 
enough to keep my mouth shut.” 

But none of them were really as careless as they 
sounded. Rhoda jumped down and hugged Nan. 
It was true that something might have happened to 
the latter if the lion had missed his intended prey. 

“And we’ll have to shoot the poor calf. It’s 
broken its leg,” the ranch girl said, after the con- 
gratulations were over. 

The red and white cow still stood over the calf 
and bellowed. She would occasionally run to the 
dead puma and try to toss it ; but she did not much 
like the near approach of human beings, either. 

“I tell you what,” Walter said, examining the 
dead puma with a boy’s interest: “That was an 


126 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 


awfully clean shot, Rhoda. The pelt won’t be hurt. 
You should have this skin cured and made into a 
rug.” 

“Oh, yes!” cried Bess. “Take it back to Lake- 
view Hall with you, Rhoda, and decorate Room 
Eight, Corridor Four!” 

“Come along, then,” the Western girl said, smil- 
ing. “We’ll ride over to the herd and send one of 
the boys back to skin the lion and butcher the veal, 
too. We might as well eat that calf as to leave him 
for the coyotes.” 

They hurried away from the vicinity of the dead 
puma, and, to tell the truth, for the rest of the ride 
the visitors from the East kept very close together. 

“To think,” sighed Bess, when they had dis- 
mounted at the house some time later and given the 
ponies over to the care of two Mexican boys who 
came up from the corrals for them, “that one is 
liable to run across lions and tigers and all kinds of 
wild beasts so near such a beautiful house as this. 
It must have been a dream.” 

“That puma skin doesn’t look like a dream,” 
said Walter, laughing and pointing to the pelt of the 
beast which hung from Rhoda’s saddle and made all 
the ponies nervous. 

“Well,” said Bess, with determination, “I am 
willing to learn to shoot. And hereafter I won’t 
go out of our bedroom without strapping a pistol 
to my waist.” 


A Trophy for Room Eight 127 

They all laughed at this statement. But they 
spent that afternoon, with revolvers and light rifles, 
on what Rhoda called “the rifle range,” down be- 
hind the bunk houses. Hesitation Kane, the horse 
wrangler, as silent almost as the sphinx, drifted 
out to the spot and showed them by gestures, if not 
by many words, how to hit the bull’s-eye. Nan, as 
well as her chum, became much interested in this 
sport. The adventure with the big puma really 
had made Nan feel as though she should know how 
to use a gun. 

Several days passed before the party rode far 
from Rose Ranch again. But every day the young 
folks were in the saddle for a few hours, and all 
became fair horsewomen — all but Walter, of course, 
who was already a horseman. 

There was great fun inside the big ranch house, 
as well as in the open. In the evenings, especially, 
the young people’s fun drew all the idle hands about 
the place, as well as the family itself. 

There were a player-piano and a fine phonograph 
in the big drawing-room. The windows of this 
room opened down to the floor, and the cowboys 
from the bunk house, the Mexicans, and even Ah 
Foon, gathered on the side porch to hear the music. 

When a dance record was put on the machine 
the clatter of boots on the piazza betrayed more than 
one pair of punchers solemnly dancing together. 

“Though,” complained Rhoda’s father, “those 


128 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

spurs the boys wear will be the ruination of my 
hardwood floor. Where do they think they are? 
At a regular honkytonk? None of ’em’s got right 
good sense.” 

“Let them dance, daddy,” said his wife, who 
usually called the ranch owner by the same pet 
name his daughter used. “They don’t often get 
a chance up here at the big house to show off. You 
and I might better be out there, dancing with them.” 

“My glory. Ladybird!” gasped Mr. Hammond, 
in mock alarm. “I’m in my stockin’ feet. I’d get 
’em full of splinters, like enough.” 

“Then, Walter, you come and dance with me,” 
the blind woman cried. “I’m bound to dance with 
somebody.” 

And to see her weaving in and out among the 
dancers in Walter’s grasp, one would never guess 
her affliction. 

That evening’s entertainment was only an im- 
promptu affair. A few nights later the house 
party was formally invited to a “ball” at the men’s 
quarters. The big dining room next the bunk 
house was cleared out, two fiddles and an accordion 
obtained from Osaka, and the Rose Ranch outfit 
showed the visitors what a real cowboy dance was 
like, 

Rhoda and her friends certainly had a fine time 
at this ball. Boys from neighboring outfits at- 



The Rose Ranch outfit showed the visitors what 
dance was like. 


a real cowboy 
(See page 128) 



4 .. 




_> ♦ *. f-* 







> V 






• ^ 








|.3f - :"s> *•<< :#?! : 


\'i;; - ^■■.-^* ^'■- * V' '-"' •’ ' '■ 

--<^. • - '-n*-.- .V . ^ ^teJBnklibi i '.- vn^^S 

A. < * . . - ^ ^1^ V r M. * ndlK^^ra .1 < ^ 


^1 


■AV” 










r' > 







A Trophy for Room Eight 129 

tended, some riding fifty and sixty miles to “shake 
a leg” as the local expression had it. 

There were both Mexican and white girls from 
Osaka and from other ranches. Even a party of 
Indians attended, but the young squaws were in 
civilized costume and looked even more “American” 
than the Mexican girls. One young Indian, how- 
ever, confided to Walter that he did not think the 
new dances were graceful or really worthy. 

“Really, the square dances and the good old waltz 
are more to my taste,” he said. “We never took 
up these one- and two-steps at Carlisle when I was 
there.” 

“Another of my cherished beliefs gone,” con- 
fessed Walter, afterward, to Nan. “I bet that red- 
skin doesn’t know how to throw the tomahawk, 
and that he couldn’t give the warhoop the proper 
pronunciation if he tried. Dear me! this South- 
west is getting awfully civilized.” 

But Bess Harley was delighted with the eve- 
ning’s fun. Going to bed at midnight, she said : 

“Dear me, Rhoda, what perfectly lovely times 
you can have out here in the wilderness. I never 
danced with so many nice boys before. I never 
would have believed Rose Ranch was like this.” 


CHAPTER XVI 


EXPECTATIONS 

After this Nan and Bess and Grace, as well as 
Walter, were well acquainted with the “boys” about 
Rose Ranch. At least, they knew all those em- 
ployed within easy riding distance of the ranch 
house. 

It was later that they learned they had met none 
of “Dan’s bunch.” That was the crowd that had 
ridden away the very morning after the visitors 
had arrived at the ranch. The outfit headed by 
Dan MacCormack had gone to round up a horse 
herd many miles from headquarters. 

Mr. Hammond and several other ranchmen of 
the vicinity allowed their horses to run wild in the 
hills for a part of each year. The larger part, in 
fact. 

“You see, they get their own living up there, on 
pasturage that they never could be driven to,” 
Rhoda explained to the girls. “Besides, many of 
the finest mustangs in the country run wild and 
will never be caught. Daddy likes to have his 
herds crossed with that wild blood. It makes the 
130 


Expectations iji 

colts more vigorous and handsomer. Oh, I just 
wish you girls could see some of the wild stallions. 
But they seldom come down with the herds to the 
rodeo. They go back into the wilder hills with the 
scrubs that the boys don’t care to drive in. 

“About this time of year the several bands be- 
longing to Rose Ranch and our neighbors are driven 
down to the lowlands. The mares and yearlings 
are already branded, of course ; so tlie various own- 
ers cut out their own animals, and the young colts, 
of course, run with their mothers. 

“Each ranch outfit knows its own colts and brands 
accordingly. We call it a round-up. ‘Rodeo’ is 
Mexican for it. We drive them into the branding 
pens and mark the colts. Then we cut out the 
horses that are needed on the ranch, or to train for 
sale, and let the others drift again.” 

“And do all the poor horses have to be burned?” 
murmured Grace, with a shudder. 

“And our cattle, too. How else would we know; 
them from other people’s cattle?” demanded Rhoda. 
“It’s nowhere near so horrid as it sounds. The 
smart is soon over. And, really, how else could we 
tell the creatures apart?” 

“Goodness! don’t ask me,” said Grace. “I am 
not in the cattle business.” 

But she confessed to Nan that she intended to 
shut her eyes tight when the poor little colts were 
to be burned, and stuff her fingers into her ears, too. 


132 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

However, she and the other girls were very 
eager to attend the round-up ; and a messenger from 
Dan, the sub-foreman, had come in to headquarters 
with the announcement that the herdsmen from 
the combined ranches were driving down the biggest 
bunch of horses in a decade. 

“You and your party, Rhoda, can start away in 
the morning, bright and early,” said her father at 
dinner that night. “I’ve sent away a grub wagon 
and Ah Foon’s right bower to cook for you. I 
know you’d cause a famine if you depended on the 
regular chuck wagon of Dan’s outfit. There isn’t 
but one sleeping tent; Walter will have to rough it.” 

“That will not bother me, Mr. Hammond,” de- 
clared the boy. “I’ve camped out more than once.” 

“ ’Twon’t be much of a punishment to sleep out- 
of-doors this weather,” said the old ranchman. “All 
that may bother you is a tornado. We have ’em 
occasionally at this season.” 

“And what do you do when there is a tornado, 
Mr. Hammond?” asked Bess, interested. 

“Only one thing to do — ^hold tight and keep your 
hair on,” chuckled Mr. Hammond. “If you really 
do get in the path of one, lie down and cling to the 
grass-roots till it blows over.” 

“Oh! A cyclone!” cried Bess. 

“Not exactly. A cyclone, I reckon, is some 
worse. A cyclone is a twister. They say if a 
cyclone hits a pig end to, and the wrong way, it 


Expectations 133- 

twists his tail to the left instead of to the right 
and he’s never the same pig again.” 

“Now, daddy!” complained Rhoda, “what do 
you want to tell such awful jokes for? Nothing 
like that ever happened to our pigs.” 

“Well,” said her father, his eyes twinkling, “we 
never had a real cyclone down here. But tornadoes 
are bad enough.” 

It was barely daybreak the next morning when 
the sleepy peons brought the ponies to the house. 
Rhoda knew the trail well, and within the precincts 
of Rose Ranch, at least, her father did not consider 
it necessary for any guard to ride with her. 

“I often ride to Osaka for the mail,” explained 
Rhoda. “What should I be afraid of?” 

“Aren’t there any tramps?” murmured Grace. 

“Well,” laughed Rhoda, “not the kind you mean. 
Tramps afoot would not get far in this country. 
And how; could a man on foot catch me? Your 
kind of tramps don’t go far from the railroad lines. 
And if there are any other ne’er-do-wells in thp 
neighborhood, they know daddy too well to molest 
me. You see, daddy used to be sheriff in the old 
days. And he has a reputation,” laughed Rhoda. 

This conversation occurred just after they left 
the house on this windy morning, with a red sun 
coming up behind them “as big as a cartwheel,” 
Bess announced. The level rays of the sun shot far, 
far across the plains and gilded the line of buttes 


134 Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

and mesas Rhoda had told them so much about 
while back at Lakeview Hall. 

“Those are not the Blue Buttes this morning, 
Rhoda,” declared Nan. “They are golden.” 

Rhoda’s eyes swept the frontage of the eminences. 
She carried a pair of glasses in a case slung from 
her shoulder. Suddenly she seized these, uncased 
them, and clapped them to her eyes. 

“Hi, cap’n!” cried Bess, “what do you spy?” 

“See that flash between those two hills?” said 
Rhoda, reining in her mount. 

They gathered about her, looking where she 
aimed the glasses. Walter exclaimed: 

“I see the flash ! It isn’t the sun shining on guns, 
is it?” 

“Nonsense!” cried Nan Sherwood. 

“No-o,” said Rhoda. “People don’t carry guns 
that way around here. Besides, the only part of a 
gun that the sun would flash on would be the 
bayonet; and we don’t carry army rifles in this 
country,” and she laughed. 

“There it is again I” exclaimed Walter. 

“I see it, too,” said Nan. “Rhoda, what can it 
be? Something is surely moving this way on a 
road.” 

“That is the old Spansh Trail,” said the Rose 
Ranch girl. “It is the trail I told you about, by 
which the old Conquistadors of Cortez reached this 


Expectations 135 

part of the country. And it is the most direct road 
into Mexico.” 

“It must be some kind of caravan coming through 
there,” said Bess dryly. 

“You are quite right,” Rhoda declared. A party 
of horsemen are riding this way. And they are 
Mexicans.” 

“Rhoda!” cried Nan, “you can’t see that through 
those glasses.” 

“No; I cannot distinguish the horsemen. But I 
can see the little flashes moving across the saddle 
of the Gap and down into the valley on this side. 
And I know they are Mexicans because those flashes 
are the sun’s rays shining on the silver trimming 
on their sombreros. Yes, they are Mexicans.” 

“Glory be!” exclaimed Bess. “Can you be sure 
of all that?” 

“More. Poor Mexicans — ^the peons who come 
up here to find work — do not wear such sombreros. 
Nor do many Mexicans waste their money in such 
fashions nowadays. But there is a class that dress 
just that fancily.’’ 

“Who are they?” 

“Men that the ranchers here will not want to see. 
I know that daddy will ride over to the rodeo be- 
hind us, or I would turn about now and run to tell 
him. There! they are gone. There must have 
been a dozen of them.” 

“But who are they?” demanded Nan, anxiously. 


136 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

“Of course, I am not positive. Bui I think,” 
said Rhoda, closing the glasses and putting them 
in the case again, “that they are a band of wander- 
ers. Perhaps a raiding party led by one of the 
so-called ‘liberators’ of Mexico. You know, there 
are more ‘liberators’ in Mexico than you can shake 
a stick at,” and the girl of Rose Ranch laughed. 

“You mean bandits!” cried Nan. 

“Well, that is a harsh word. They are political 
leaders for the most part. Sometimes they become 
important leaders. But when they come over on 
this side of the Border they need just as doge watch- 
ing as a pack of wolves.” 

“Are these men like that Lobarto you told us 
about?” said Walter. 

“Perhaps. Of course, I do not really know. Let 
us ride along, and when daddy overtakes us, I will 
tell him.” 



CHAPTER XVII 


THE ROUND-UP 

Mr. Hammond, however, did not overtake the 
young people before they reached the mouth of the 
canon through which Rhoda said the army of 
horses must be driven down to the branding pens. 

“Of course, we could go on to the pens and wait 
there,” she said to her friends. “Our personal out- 
fit is there already. Daddy sent it over last night. 
But then you would miss a sight that I want you all 
to take back East with you as a memory. It is 
something you will never forget.” 

“Go on, Rhoda,” said Bess. “Show us. Of 
course, we haven’t been seeing wonderful things 
right along ever since we arrived at Rose Ranch!” 

“This is something special,” said Rhoda, and led 
the way into the canon at a quick canter. 

The high-walled slash in the foothills narrowed 
rapidly, and five miles from the mouth of it the 
walls were so close together that Walter declared 
he could throw a stone from one to the other. 

The way was becoming rocky, too ; the patches of 
grass were meager and the brush grew more sparse. 
137 


138 Nan Sherwwd at Rose Ranch 

The summit of the bare walls rose higher and 
higher. Far above the cut a vulture wheeled. The 
sun beat down into the canon, for it was now mid- 
forenoon, and, the breeze having died, the party 
of riders began to suffer from the heat. 

“I’m melting,” declared Bess. “But that’s a 
small matter. I was getting too fat, anyway.” 

“Listen 1” commanded Rhoda suddenly. 

They heard then a growing sound like the rolling 
of many barrels at a distance. It was not thunder. 
The sky was as clear as a bell. 

“Quick 1” exclaimed Rhoda. “We must get up 
yonder in that cleft! See? And keep a tight rein 
on your ponies.” 

They rode quickly off the trail, while the strange 
sound grew in volume. It certainly was something 
coming down the canon ; but the huge bowlders shut 
out all view of what lay thirty yards away from the 
party. 

They reached a small cleared space against the 
foot of one cliff, but some yards above the bottom 
of the canon. Now, as the growing sound came 
nearer. Nan shouted : 

“I know what it is! It’s the herd of horses.” 

Rhoda nodded. The clatter of the countless 
hoofs came nearer and nearer. The girls and Wal- 
ter dismounted, and Rhoda warned them to stand 
in front of their mounts and keep the bridle-reins in 
their hands. 


The Round-up 139 

They could not yet see the head of the herd; but 
above the bowlders they saw a cloud of dust rising. 
This dust rolled down the canon and reached the 
observers first. Then appeared several horsemen 
riding at a sharp canter. The range horse almost 
never trots. 

Rhoda had to shout to make her voice heard by 
her friends above the clatter of hoofs: 

“Some of those are our men ; others belong to the 
Long Bow, Gridiron, and Bar One outfits. They 
are leading the herd and will spread out at the 
mouth of the canon and keep the flanks of the mob 
from drifting.” 

“Oh ! The ponies !” shrieked Bess suddenly. 

Out of the rolling dust cloud below them were 
thrust the bobbing heads, shaking manes, and 
plunging forefeet of the leaders of the herd. Black 
horses, red horses, gray, white, all shades of roan, 
pinto, and the coveted buckskin color, which al- 
ways sells well in the West. 

The tossing manes became like the surf of an 
angry sea. The thunder of hoofs was all but deaf- 
ening. Above this noise sounded the shrill whist- 
ling of the male horses and the answering neighs 
of the half-mad herd. 

There was reason for clinging to the bridles of 
the saddled ponies from Rose Ranch. They be- 
gan to answer the cries of the wild mob below, and 
stamped their little hoofs upon the rock. Bess 


140 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

Harley’s mount stood up on his hind legs, and if 
Walter had not caught the reins the brute might 
have got away. 

"Why, you naughty boy !” cried Bess. "I never 
would have thought you’d do it. He seemed so 
tame, Rhoda!” 

Rhoda could not hear her, but shook a warning 
head. While the herd was passing one could not 
trust even the best trained saddle pony. It was 
only a few months before that they had all been 
members of just such a mob of wild horses as this. 

The dust was carried to the other side of the 
canon by such air as was stirring; therefore Rhoda 
and her visitors obtained a better view of the horses 
as the herd flowed on. There seemed to be an end- 
less stream of them. Hundreds — ^yes, thousands — 
plunged down the canon trail, sure footed as sheep 
over the rocky path. 

The girls fairly squealed with delight when they 
saw the long-legged colts staggering along close to 
their mothers’ flanks. There was no play among 
them, for without doubt the younger creatures were 
all much confused, and very tired. 

Had there been any place where the mates could 
have turned out of the mob with their young, they 
would undoubtedly have done so; but the way was 
narrow and those behind pushed the others on. 
After all. Nan secretly thought, it was a cruel way 
to treat the animals. 


The Round-up 141 

She did not set herself in judgment upon the 
method of handling the horses, for she knew she 
was utterly ignorant of the conditions. Yet she 
was sorry for them, and especially pitied the 
mothers and their young. 

The stream of horses was nearly an hour in 
passing the observation point Rhoda Hammond had 
selected. The creatures kept on at a sw'inging 
canter; never at a walk. Hurrying, snorting, 
sweating with fear of they knew not what I The 
odor and dust that rose from the seemingly endless 
stream of animals finally became rather unpleasant 
in the nostrils of the onlookers. But they were 
held there until all should have passed. 

By and by the last clattering hoof of the herd was 
gone, the rear brought up by a bunch of the very 
young and their mothers, as well as some few lame 
ones. Then Dan MacCormack, red-bearded and 
black-eyed, rode by with the rest of the herdsmen, 
raising his sombrero to Rhoda and her friends. 

At the extreme tail of the procession came the 
chuck wagons of the four outfits, each drawn by 
four mules with flopping ears and shaved tails, the 
drivers smoking corncob pipes, and the cooks lolling 
beside them on the seats, their arms folded. 

“Now we’ll go,” said Rhoda, it being possible to 
speak in an ordinary tone once again and be heard. 
“When we get out of the canon we’ll circle around 


142 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

the herd and precede it to Rolling Spring Valley, 
where the branding pens are set up.” 

Grace rubbed her gloved hand tenderly over the 
scar on her pony’s hip and said to him : 

“Did it hurt you very much when they burned 
you with the nasty old iron?” He pricked his ears 
forward and whisked his tail, so Bess said, in a 
most knowing way, as though he remembered the 
indignity clearly. “I don’t believe I want to see the 
branding done,” she added. “That ugly ‘XL’ 
doesn’t improve his appearance.” 

“That is ‘Cross L’ not ‘XL’ ; and the brand is not 
so disfiguring as some,” Rhoda said. “It helps 
sell a lot of horses for daddy. His brand is known 
all over the country.” 

“That fact doesn’t make it any the less cruel,” 
Grace said, with some spirit. “How would you 
like to be branded, Rhoda Hammond?” 

“We-ell,” drawled Rhoda, “you know, I’m not 
a horse.” 

They clattered out of the canon at last, well be- 
hind the train, and then swerved directly west to 
escape the dust-shrouded herd. Their ponies were 
still excited, and Rhoda warned her companions to 
keep them well in hand. 

Skulking among the rocks at the edge of the 
plain, they saw several tawny creatures whose eyes 
were evidently fixed longingly on the herd of 
horses. 


The Round-up 143 

“Coyotes,” said Rhoda. “They haven’t a chance, 
unless a colt goes lame and loses its mother.” 

“Why don’t we shoot them?” demanded Walter 
eagerly, 

“They are not worth the powder we’d waste,” 
declared Rhoda. “And then, they are sort of 
scavengers. We would not think of shooting a 
vulture ; so why not let the coyotes live — out here ? 
When they sneak around the poultry runs, that’s 
another thing.” 

Two hours past noon the party rode down a 
broad green slope into a well-watered valley. A 
river ran through its length, and several small tribu- 
taries joined it. More than one grove of noble 
cottonwood trees graced the river’s banks. The 
grass was lush, offering pasturage for thousands of 
cattle, although there was not a horned creature in 
sight. The herd of horses would be contented here 
as soon as their alarm had passed. 

There was a camp by the riverside, and a tent was 
set up beside the special chuck wagon Mr. Hammond 
had sent over from Rose Ranch. But Rhoda’s 
father had not arrived at this rendezvous when the 
little cavalcade rode down to the encampment. 

Ah Boon’s assistant, a smiling Mexican lad, had 
prepared lunch, and the girls and Walter certainly 
were ready for it. It was fully two hours later 
before the other chuck wagons lumbered into view. 
.They had passed the herd which would be allowed 


144 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

to drift down into the valley during the evening, 
guarded by all the hands until daybreak the next 
day. 

Mr. Hammond appeared, and Rhoda told him at 
once about the cavalcade of horsemen that she and 
her friends had seen riding over the saddle of the 
old Spanish Trail so early in the morning. The 
ranchman betrayed considerable interest in the 
matter. 

“Did you count ’em ?’’ he asked his daughter. 

“There must have been all of a dozen. I could 
not make out the number exactly,” Rhoda said. 

“Well,” her father grumbled, shaking his shaggy 
head, “we’ve got our hands full just now, that’s 
sure. But we don’t need to worry about stranglers 
while there’s so many of us down here. And there 
are plenty of the boys up at the house and with the 
cows. Reckon it’s all right.” 

“Do you suppose,” whispered Nan, “that those 
Mexicans have come over here for some bad pur- 
pose, Rhoda?” 

“Maybe they are bandits, like that Lobarto you 
told us about,” said Grace, 

“Maybe they will bury treasure somewhere 
around here,” Bess put in eagerly. “And I say, 
Rhoda: When are we going to get up that party 
to hunt for Lobarto’s treasure ?” 

“Not until after this round-up, that’s sure,” 
laughed the girl of Rose Ranch. 


The Round-up 145 

The young people went down to the corrals and 
branding pens and were told, in the course of time, 
by Hesitation Kane that the corrals would accom- 
modate a thousand horses at once. It was be- 
lieved that three days would be occupied in hand- 
ling the great mob of stock that had been driven 
down from the hills. 

Strange cowboys began to drift into the camp; 
but all seemed well behaved, and they were the 
easiest men in the world to get along with. They 
all put themselves out to give the visitors any in- 
formation in their power. 

“We’re going to have a bully time here,” Bess 
declared to Nan. “I do not really want to go to 
bed to-night. I’d rather hang about the campfires 
and listen to the boys who are off watch tell stories.” 

But Rhoda would not agree to this, and the four 
girls retired at a reasonable hour. Walter slept 
under one of the cook wagons, rolled up in a 
blanket like the cowboys themselves. Everything 
seemed peaceful when they went to bed, and there 
surely was no sign of one of the tornadoes Mr. 
Hammond had talked about. The girls, at least, 
slept just as soundly in their tent as they had in 
the beds at the ranch house. 

The camp was aroused betimes the next morning. 
Breakfast was eaten by starlight. Immediately the 
first gang of horses, cut oift of the main herd, was 
driven down. 


146 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

Walter and the girls were in the saddle as early 
as anybody. Of course, none of the visitors could 
swing a rope ; but Rhoda showed them how to ride 
on the flank of the herd and keep the young and 
wild horses from running free. They had all to be 
driven into the wide entrance to the corral. 

It was inside this barrier that the cowboys rode 
among the frightened herd and roped those that 
were to be branded. Even Rhoda did a little of this 
before the day was over, and her friends thought 
it was quite wonderful that she showed no fear of 
the plunging and squealing horses. 

But they were much interested, even if the smell 
of scorching flesh was not pleasant. Walter de- 
clared he was going to learn to throw a lariat. 
But his sister shook her head and shut her eyes 
tight every time she saw a glowing iron taken from 
one of the fires. 

“Never mind,” Nan said. “It is enormously 
interesting, and we shall likely never see the like 
again. Just think of growing up like Rhoda, 
among scenes of this kind. No wonder she seemed 
different from the rest of us girls when she came 
to Lakeview Hall.” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


THE OUTIAW 

The first day of the round-up was done, and well 
done, Mr. Hammond said. The girls had been in 
the saddle for more than twelve hours; and how 
they did sleep this second night under canvas ! 

Bess wanted to say something about plans for 
hunting the Mexican bandit’s treasure before she 
fell asleep; but actually she dropped into slumber 
in the middle of the word “treas-ure” and never 
finished what she was going to say, 

Nan, however, awoke long before dawn again. 
She felt lame and stiff, like an old person afflicted 
with rheumatism. The unusualness of the previous 
day’s activities caused this stiffness of the joints 
and soreness of her muscles. 

She heard the fires crackling and saw the reflec- 
tion of firelight on the side of the tent, so she knew 
the cooks were astir. But nobody else seemed to 
be moving yet, and Nan might have turned over for 
another nap had it not been for a peculiar sound 
which suddenly smote upon her ear, and seemingly 
from a long way off. 


147 


148 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

After hearing this for a minute or two, she got up 
and crept to the tent entrance. The flap was laid 
back for the sake of ventilation, and with her 
kimono hunched about her shoulders, she crouched 
in the doorway and looked out across the open space 
before the grove in which the camp was pitched. 
It was just between dark and dawn when strange 
figures seem to move in the dimness of out-of- 
doors. Yet Nan knew there really was nothing 
stirring there on the plain. The herd was much 
farther away. 

The sound that had disturbed her came to her 
ears again, a high, thin, crackling whistle — a most 
uncanny noise. 

“What can it be?” murmured Nan aloud. 

“Nan !” whispered a voice beyond her. 

“Goodness! Is that you, Walter Mason?” she 
demanded, huddling her robe closer about her. 

“Yes. Come on out. Do you hear that funny 
noise?” 

“Yes. What is it? I can’t come out. I’m not 
dressed.” 

“Well, get dressed,” he said, chuckling. “I want 
to know what that There ! Hear it again ?” 

The high whistling sound rose once more. It 
seemed to be coming nearer, and was from the 
north, the direction of the hills. 

“Isn’t it funny?” gasped Nan. “Shall I ask 
Rhoda?” 


The Outlaw 


149 


“Come on out and we’ll ask one of the men if he 
knows what it is. That horse wrangler is up. I 
just saw him going toward the pony corral.” 

“Hesitation Kane? Well, we’ll never learn if we 
ask him,” giggled Nan. “Wait, Walter. I’ll come 
right out.” 

She went softly back to her cot and sat down on 
it to draw on her stockings. She dressed as quick- 
ly and as quietly as possible. Even Rhoda did not 
awake, and, knowing that all her girl friends were 
probably just as tired and stiff as she was. Nan 
got out of the tent without disturbing them in the 
slightest. 

“Oh, Walter!” she murmured, seizing his hand 
in the dusk, “how strange everything seems. Such 
a wilderness ! And I haven’t washed my face.” 

“Come on down to the brook,” said her boy 
friend. “They call it a river here. They ought 
to see the Drainage Canal !” and he laughed. “What 
do you suppose they would say to the Mississippi 
River?” 

“Just what Rhoda said she thought of it when 
she first saw that noble stream: That it was an 
awful waste of land to put so much water on it! 
You know there are sections of this country down 
here where it rains only once in about eight years.” 

They reached the river’s edge. It was light 
enough here to see what they were about. Both 
knelt down and laved their faces and hands and, as 


1^0 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

Nan said, “wiggled the winkers out of their eyes.” 

Walter produced a clean towel, for Nan had for-* 
gotten hers, and one on one end and one on the 
other, they dried their faces and hands. Nan’s haif 
was in two firm plaits, and she would not dress it 
anew until later. 

“I don’t want to wake up the tribe. They are 
sleeping so soundly,” she explained. 

“There’s that funny call again!” exclaimed Wal- 
ter, stopping in a vigorous scrubbing of his face 
with the towel to listen. 

“Come on!” cried Nan under her breath. “We 
must find out what that means.” 

They started for the campfire where the cooks 
were at work, and ran, clinging to each other’s hand. 
Before they reached the cleared space about the 
Rose Ranch chuck wagon, a figure loomed up be- 
fore them. 

“Here’s Mr. Kane now!” cried Nan, halting be- 
fore the grim-visaged horseman. “Good-morning, 
Mr. Kane!” 

The man’s lips twisted into a smile, and he 
nodded. But no word came from him. Nan was 
not to be put oflf easily. She asked : 

“Do you know what that sound is, Mr. Kane? 
Do listen to it!” as the high-pitched whistle again 
reached their ears. 

Hesitation Kane struggled to answer — and it was 


The Outlaw 


151 

a struggle. They could see that. He flushed, and 
paled, and finally blurted out a single word : 

“Outlaw !” 

With that he strode by and was lost in the shad- 
ows of the trees. Nan and Walter gazed at each 
other in both amazement and amusement. 

“What do you know about that?” demanded the 
boy. 

“Well, we got him to say something,” sighed the 
girl. 

“But — but it doesn’t mean anything. ‘Outlaw,’ 
indeed! Does he mean to tell us that there is a 
Mexican bandit, for instance, out there whistling?” 

“How foolish!” laughed Nan. “Of course not.” 

“Then, Miss Sherwood, please explain,” com- 
manded Walter. 

“You’d better ask Mr. Hesitation Kane to ex- 
plain.” 

“And get another cryptic answer? No, thanks! 
I want to know There it is again !” 

The sound was closer. Nan suddenly laughed. 

“Why,” she cried, “I know what it is. It’s a 
horse — a wild horse. Of course !” 

“But he said ‘outlaw.’ Oh!” added Walter sud- 
denly, “I know now. Some of the wild stallions 
never can be tamed. I’ve read about them. Of 
course, it is a stallion. We heard them calling 
day-before-yesterday. 

“Well, I never!” chuckled Walter, “That fellow 


152 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

had me fooled. I didn’t know but we were about 
to be attacked by Mexican robbers.” 

“Oh, Walter! do you suppose they were desper- 
adoes who came through the Gap day-before-yester- 
day morning?” Nan asked. 

“I don’t know. Maybe Rhoda and her father 
were fooling.” 

“But they take it so coolly.” 

“They take everything coolly,” said the boy, with 
admiration. “I never saw such people! Why, 
these cowboys do the greatest stunts on horseback, 
and make no bones of it. No circus or Wild West 
show was ever the equal of it. 

“Hullo, here’s Rhoda now!” 

The Rose Ranch girl appeared, smiling and wide 
awake. She did not appear to be lame from the 
previous day’s riding. 

“Hear that renegade calling out there?” she 
asked. “He’s followed the herd down from the 
hills. Come on and let’s catch our ponies. We’ll 
take a ride out that way before breakfast. If it 
is the horse I think it is, you’ll see something 
worth while.” 

They hurried down to the corral where the rid- 
ing ponies were. With her rope Rhoda noosed 
first her own, then Nan’s, and then Walter’s mounts. 
The saddles hung along the fence, and they cinched 
them on tight to the round barrels of the ponies, 
and then mounted. 


The Outlaw 


153 

The horses were fresh again, and started off 
spiritedly. The sun was coming up now, and again 
the wonder of sunrise on the plains impressed the 
girl from Tillbury. 

“It is just wonderful, Rhoda,” she told her 
friend. “I shall never cease to marvel at it.” 

“It is worth getting up in the morning to see,” 
agreed Rhoda, smiling. “There! See yonder?” 

The level rays of the sun touched up the edge of 
the plain toward which they were headed. Here 
the broken rocks of the foothills joined the lush 
grass of the valley. On a bowlder, outlined clearly 
against the background of the hill, stood a beautiful 
creature which, in the early light, seemed taller and 
far more noble looking than any ordinary horse. 

“Oh!” gasped Nan, “is that the outlaw?” 

The distant horse stretched his neck gracefully 
and blew another shrill call. He was headed to- 
ward the herd which was now being urged into the 
valley by the punchers. The horse whistled again 
and again. 

“What a beautiful creature!” murmured Nan. 
“Oh, Rhoda! can’t we catch him?” 

“That’s the fellow,” said the Western girl. “They 
have been trying to rope him for three seasons. 
But nobody has ever been able to get near enough 
to him yet. He is not a native horse, either.” 

“What do you mean by that?” asked Walter 
curiously. 


154 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

“You know, horses ran wild in this country when 
the Spanish first came in. These were of the 
mustang breed. The Indian pony — the cayuse — 
was found up in Utah and Idaho. Horse-breeders 
down here have bought Morgan sires and other 
blooded stock to run with the mustangs. 

“That fellow yonder was bought by Mr. Dur- 
anger, an Englishman, who owned the Long Bow. 
The horse got away five years ago and ran off with 
the wild herd, and now he is the wildest of the 
bunch. And swift I” 

“What a beauty!” explaimed Walter. 

The sxmlight shone full on the handsome horse. 
He was black, save for his chest, forefeet, and a 
star on his forehead. Those spots gleamed as 
white as silver. His tail swept the ground. His 
coat shone as though it had just been curried. He 
stamped his hoofs upon the rock and called again 
to the herd that he had trailed down from the fast- 
nesses of the hills. 

“If we could only catch him!” murmured Nan. 

Rhoda laughed. “You want to catch that out- 
law; and Bess wants to find the Mexican treasure. 
I reckon you’ll both have your work cut out for 
you.” 


CHAPTER XIX 


A RAID 

The branding of the horses had drawn from 
ranches all about every man that could be spared. 
There were upward of a hundred men, including 
the camp workers and cooks, in the Rolling Spring 
Valley for those three days. 

And how they did work! From early morning 
until dark the fires in the branding pens flamed. 
Roped horses and colts were being dragged in dif- 
ferent directions all the time. Those already 
branded, and selected for training on the several 
ranches, were driven away in small bunches. 

The whistling outlaw went away after a day. 
None of the boys had time to try to ride him down, 
although there was scarcely a man of the lot who 
did not covet the beautiful creature. 

Rhoda and her friends did about as they pleased 
while the branding was going on ; only they did not 
ride out of the valley. Nan began to suspect that 
the reason Rhoda would not lead them far from 
the riverside encampment could be traced to the 
appearance of the Mexican riders whom they had 
155 


156 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

glimpsed coming over the old Spanish Trail in the 
Blue Buttes. Nothing more had been heard of 
those strangers; but Nan knew Mr. Hammond had 
warned his men all to keep a sharp lookout for them. 

It was when everything was cleared up and the 
outfits were getting under way for their respective 
ranches, the last colt having been branded, that a 
cowboy riding from the south, and therefore from 
the direction of the Long Bow range, came tearing 
across the valley toward the encampment by the cot- 
tonwood trees. 

“Something on that feller’s mind besides his hair, 
I shouldn’t wonder,” observed Mr. Hammond, 
drawlingly, as he sat his horse beside the group of 
girls ready then to turn ranchward. “Hi! Bill 
Shaddock,” he shouted to the Long Bow boss, 
“ain’t that one of your punchers cornin’ yonder?” 

“Yes, it is, Mr. Hammond,” said Bill. 

“Something’s happened, I reckon,” observed Mr. 
Hammond, and he rode down to the river’s edge 
with the others to meet the excited courier. 

The river was broad, but shallow. The lathered 
pony the cowpuncher rode splattered through the 
stream and staggered on to the low bank on their 
side. Bill Shaddock, who was a rather grimly speak- 
ing man, advised : 

“Better get off an’ shoot that little brown horse 
now, Tom. You’ve nigh about run him to death.” 

“He ain’t dead yet — not by a long shot,” pro- 


A Raid 


157 

nounced the courier. “Give me a fresh mount, and 
all you fellows that can ride hike out behind me. 
You’re wanted.” 

“What for?” asked Mr. Hammond. 

“That last bunch of stock you started for our 
ranch, Bill,” said the man, in explanation, “has been 
run off. Mex. thieves. That’s what! Old Man’s 
makin’ up a posse now. Says to bring all the riders 
you can spare. There’s more’n a dozen of the yal- 
ler thieves.” 

Further questioning elicited the information that, 
a day’s march from the headquarters of the Long 
Bow outfit, just at evening, a troop of Mexican 
horsemen had swooped down upon the band of 
half-wild horses and their drivers, shot at the latter, 
and had driven off the stock. Two of the men had 
been seriously wounded. 

“Oh! isn’t that awful?” Grace Mason said. “Is 
it far from here ?” 

“Is what far from here?” demanded Rhoda. 

“Where this battle took place,” replied the 
startled girl. “Let us go back to the house — do!” 

But the others were eager to go with the band 
of cowboys that were at once got together to follow 
the raiders. Mr. Hammond, however, would not 
hear to this proposal. He would not even let Wah 
ter go with the party. 

“You young folks start along for the house,” he 
advised. “Can’t run the risk of letting you get all 


158 Nan Shenvood at Rose RancK 

shot up by a party of rustlers. What would your 
folks ever say to me?” and he rode away laughing 
at the head of the cavalcade chosen to follow the 
Mexican horse thieves. 

“No hope for us,” said Walter, rather piqued by 
Mr. Hammond’s refusal. “I would like to see what 
they do when they overtake that bunch of Mex- 
icans.” 

“If they overtake them, you mean,” said Bess. 
“Why, the thieves have nearly twenty hours’ start.” 

“But they cannot travel anywhere near as fast as 
father and those others will,” explained Rhoda. 
“Dear me! it does seem as though the Long Bow 
boys ought to have looked out for their own horses. 
I don’t like to have daddy ride off on such errands. 
Sometimes there are accidents.” 

“I should think there would be!” exclaimed Nan 
Sherwood. “Why! two men already have been 
wounded.” 

“Just like the moving pictures !” said Bess eager- 
ly. “A five-reel thriller.” 

“You wouldn’t talk like that if Mr. Hammond 
should be hurt,” said Grace admonishingly. 

“Of course he won’t be !” returned Bess. “What 
nonsense !” 

But perhaps Rhoda did not feel so much assur- 
ance. At least she warned them all to say nothing 
about the raid by the Mexicans when they arrived 
at Rose Ranch. 


A Raid 


159 

“Mother will probably not ask where daddy has 
gone; and what she doesn’t know will not alarm 
her,” Rhoda explained. 

All the bands of horses for the home corrals had 
been driven away before the lumbering chuck 
wagons started from the encampment. Rhoda and 
her friends soon were out of sight of the slower- 
moving mule teams. 

They did not ride straight for Rose Ranch; but, 
having come out of the valley, they skirted the hills 
on the lookout for game. Rhoda and Walter both 
carried rifles now, and Nan was eager to get a shot 
at something besides a tin can. 

The herd of horses had gone down into the 
valley, of course; therefore more timid creatures 
ventured out of the hills on to the plain. It was 
not an hour after high-noon when Rhoda descried 
through her glasses a group of grazing animals 
some distance ahead. 

“Goodness! what are they?” demanded Bess, 
when her attention had been called to them. 
“Chickens?” 

“The idea!” 

“They don’t look any bigger than chickens,” said 
Bess, with confidence. 

“Well,” drawled Rhoda, handing her glass to the 
doubting one, “they’ve got four legs, and they 
haven’t got feathers. So I don’t see how you can 
make poultry out of them.” 


i6o Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

“Oh, the cunning little things!” cried Bess, hav- 
ing the glasses focused in a moment on the spot 
indicated. “They — they are deer I” 

“Antelope. Only a small herd,” said Rhoda. 
“Now, if we can only get near enough to them for 
a shot ” 

“Oh, my! have we got to shoot them, Rhoda?” 
asked Grace. “Are they dangerous — like that 
puma ?” 

“Well, no,” admitted the Western girl. “But 
they are good to eat. And you will be glad enough 
to eat roast antelope after it has hung for a couple 
of days. Ah Foon will prepare it deliciously.” 

“Come on. Nan,” said Bess, “and take a squint 
through the glasses. But don’t let Grace look. She 
will want to capture them all and keep them for 
pets.” 

But Nan was looking in another direction. Along 
the western horizon a dull, slate-colored cloud was 
slowly rising. Nan wondered if it was dust, and 
if it was caused by the hoofs of cattle or horses. 
It was a curious looking cloud. 


CHAPTER XX 


THE ANTELOPE HUNT; AND MORE 

The little party approached with caution the spot 
where the antelopes were feeding. Rhoda was no 
amateur; and she advised her friends to ride quiet- 
ly, to make no quick motions, and as far as possible 
to ride along the edge of the rising ground. 

Of course, the wind was blowing from the ante- 
lopes; otherwise the party would never have got 
near them at all. The creatures were feeding so 
far out on the plain that it would, too, be unwise 
to try to creep up on them behind the rocks and 
bushes among which the cavalcade now rode. 

“When we get somewhat nearer, we shall have to 
ride right out into plain sight and run them down,” 
Rhoda said. “That is our best chance.” 

“The poor little things!” murmured Grace. 
“They won’t have a chance with our ponies.” 

“Oh, won’t they?” laughed Rhoda softly. “I 
guess you don’t know that the antelope is almost the 
fastest thing that ever crossed these plains. Even 
the iron horse is no match for the antelope.” 

“Do you mean to say they can outrun a steam 
engine?” asked Bess in wonder. 

l6i 


162 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

“Surely.” 

“Then what chance have we to run them down?” 
demanded Nan. 

“Well, there are two ways by which we may get 
near enough for a shot,” Rhoda explained. “I 
have been out with the boys hunting antelope, and 
they certainly are the most curious creatures.” 

“Who are ? The cowboys ?” asked Bess. 

“Yes. Sometimes,” laughed Rhoda. “But in 
this case I mean that the antelopes are curious. 
I’ve seen Steve get into a clump of brush and stand 
on his head, waving his legs in the air. A bunch 
of antelopes would come right up around the wav- 
ing legs, and as long as the wind blew toward him 
instead of toward the antelopes, they would not 
run. So all he had to do when he got them close 
enough was to turn end for end, pick up his gun, 
and shoot one.” 

“I don’t suppose you girls would care to try that,” 
Walter said, his eyes twinkling. “But I might do 
it.” 

“Only trouble is,” said Rhoda, after the laugh at 
Walter’s suggestion, “I don’t see any brush clumps 
out there. Do you?” 

“No-o,” said Nan. “The plain is as bare as 
your palm.” 

“Exactly,” Rhoda agreed. “So we must try 
running them down.” 


The Antelope Hunt; And More 163 

“But you say they are very speedy/' objected 
Bess. 

“Oh, yes. But there are ways of running them,” 
said Rhoda. “We will ride on a little further and 
then let our ponies breathe. I’ll show you how you 
must ride.” 

Nan was looking back again at the cloud on the 
horizon. “Isn’t that a funny looking thing?” she 
said to Bess. 

“What thing?” asked her chum, staring back also. 

“It is a cloud of dust — perhaps?” 

“Who ever saw the like !” exclaimed Bess. “Say, 
Rhoda!” 

The Western girl looked around and made a 
quick gesture for silence. So neither of the Till- 
bury girls gave the cloud another thought. 

They came at length to a piece of high brush 
which, with a pile of rocks, hid them completely 
from the herd of peacefully grazing animals. Peer- 
ing through the barrier, the girls could see the beau- 
tiful creatures plainly. 

“So pretty!” breathed Grace. “It seems a 
shame ” 

“Now, don’t be nonsensical,” said Bess practical- 
ly. “Just think how pretty a chicken is; and yet 
you do love chicken, Gracie.” 

“Softly,” warned Rhoda. “We do not know 
how far our voices may carry.” 

Then she gave the party the simple instructions 


164 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

necessary, and they pulled the ponies out from be- 
hind the brush and rocks. 

“At a gallop !” commanded Rhoda, and at once 
the party made off across the plain. 

Rhoda rode to the west of the little herd of ante- 
lopes; Walter and the other girls rode as hard as 
they could a little to the east of them. Almost at 
once the antelopes were startled. They stopped 
grazing, sprang to attention, and for a minute 
huddled together, seemingly uncertain of their next 
move. 

The four riders encircling them to the north and 
east naturally disturbed the tranquillity of the deer 
more than that single figure easily cantering in a 
westerly direction. Swerving from the larger 
party, the wild creatures darted away. 

And how they could run! The ponies would 
evidently be no match for them on a straight 
course. But as the larger number of pursuers 
pressed eastward, the antelopes began circling, and 
their course brought them in time much nearer to 
Rhoda. It was an old trick — making the fright- 
ened but fleet animals run in a half-circle. Rhoda 
was cutting across to get within rifle shot. 

The breeze soon carried the scent of the pursuing 
party to the nostrils of the antelopes, too; but they 
did not notice Rhoda. She brought up her rifle, 
shook her pony’s reins, and in half a minute stood 
up in her short stirrups and drew bead on the white 


The Antelope Hunt; And More 165 

spot behind the fore shoulder of one of the running 
antelopes. 

The distance was almost the limit for that caliber 
of rifle; but the antelope turned a somersault and 
lay still, while its mates turned ofif at a tangent and 
tore away across the plain. 

It was several minutes before Walter and the 
other girls rode up. Rhoda had not dismounted. 
She was not looking at the dead antelope. Instead, 
she had unslung her glasses again and was staring 
through them westward — toward the slate-colored 
cloud that was climbing steadily toward the zenith. 

When the ponies were halted and the sound of 
their hoofs was stilled, the young people could hear 
a moaning noise that seemed to be approaching 
from the direction toward which they were facing 
at that moment — the west. 

“Oh!” cried Nan, “what is that?” 

“Have you seen it before?” demanded Rhoda, 
shutting the glasses and putting them in the case. 

“Yes.” 

“I wish I had,” Rhoda said. “Hurry up, Wal- 
ter, and sling that antelope across your saddle. 
Look out that the pony doesn’t get away from you. 
Maybe he won’t like the smell of blood. Quick!” 

“What is the matter?” cried Bess, while Grace 
began to flush and then pale, as she always did 
when she was startled. 

“It is a storm coming,” answered Rhoda shortly. 


1 66 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

“But, Rhoda,” said Bess, “the wind is blowing 
the wrong way to bring that cloud toward us.” 

“You will find that the wind will change in a min- 
ute. And it’s going to blow some, too.” 

“Oh, my dear!” exclaimed Nan, under her 
breath, “is it what your father warned us about?” 

“A tornado?” cried Walter, from the ground 
where he was picking up the dead antelope. 

“I never saw a cloud like that that did not bring 
a big wind,” Rhoda told them. “We’ve got to 
hurry.” 

“Can we reach home?” asked Bess. 

“Not ahead of that. But we’ll find some safe 
place.” 

“What’s that coming?” cried Nan, standing up 
in her stirrups to look toward the rolling cloud. 

“The wagons,” said Rhoda. “See! The boys 
have got the mules on the gallop. Their only 
chance is to reach the ranch.” 

“But can’t we reach the house?” demanded Grace, 
trembling. 

“I won’t risk it There! See that?” 

The slate-colored cloud seemed to shut out every- 
thing behind the flying wagons like a curtain. The 
breeze about the little cavalcade had died away. 
But Rhoda’s cry called attention to something that 
sprang up from the site of the mule-drawn chuck 
wagons, and flew high in the air. 

“A balloon!” gasped Bess. 


The Antelope Hunt; And More 167 

“A balloon your granny !” exclaimed Walter, ty- 
ing the legs of the antelope to his saddle pommel. 
“Go ahead, girls. I’ll be right after you.’’ 

“It was a wagon-top,’’ explained Rhoda, twitch- 
ing her already nervous pony around. “They did 
not get it tied down soon enough.’’ 

“Then a big wind is coming!’’ Nan agreed. 

“Come on !’’ shouted Rhoda, setting spurs to her 
mount. 

“Oh, Walter !’’ shrieked Grace, her "own pony fol- 
lowing the others, while Walter and his mount re- 
mained behind. 

But the boy leaped into the saddle. He waved 
his hand to his sister. They saw his mouth open 
and knew he shouted a cheery word. But they 
could not hear a sound for the roaring of the tor- 
nado. 

In a second, it seemed, the tempest burst about 
them. Rhoda had headed her pony for the hills. 
The mounts of the other girls were close beside 
Rhoda’s pony. But Walter was instantly blotted 
out of sight. 

Whether he followed their trail or not the four 
girls could not be sure. 


CHAPTER XXI 


IN THE OLD BEAR DEN 

“Girls! Oh, girls!” shrieked Grace. “Walter is 
lost!” 

She might have been foolish enough to try to 
draw in her pony; but Rhoda, riding close beside 
her, snatched the reins out of Grace’s hand. 

“More likely he thinks we are lost!” Rhoda ex- 
claimed so that Grace, at least, heard her. Then 
she shouted to the others: “This way! This 
way !” 

“Wha-at wa-ay?” demanded Bess Harley. “I — 
I’m going every-which-way, right now !” 

But, in a very few minutes, it appeared that this 
sudden tempest was nothing to make fun over. 
The four girls, keeping close together, entered sud- 
denly a gulch, the side of which broke the velocity 
of the wind. They stood there, the four ponies 
huddled together, in a whirl of dust and flying 
debris. 

“Shout for him!” commanded Rhoda. “Don’t 
cry, Grace. Walter is quite smart enough to look 
out for himself.” 


i68 


In the Old Bear Den 


169 

"Don’t be a baby, dear,” Nan said, leaning for- 
ward to pat Grace’s arm, "He will be all right. 
And so shall we.” 

“But not standing here !” exclaimed Rhoda, after 
they had almost split their throats, as Bess de- 
clared, shrieking for the missing boy. "We must 
go farther up the gulch. I know a place ” 

"There goes my hat!” wailed Bess. 

"You’ll probably never see it again,” said Rhoda. 
"Come on! Maybe Walter will find us.” 

"But he doesn’t know this country as you do, 
Rhoda,” objected Nan. 

"He’ll know what to do just the same,” Rhoda 
said practically. 

"He will if he remembers what your father told 
us,” said Bess. 

"What’s that?” demanded her chum. 

"Mr. Ham-Hammond said to lie do-own and hang 
on to the grass-roots,” stammered the almost breath- 
less Bess. "And I guess we’d better do that, too.” 

"Come on. I’ll get you out of the wind,” said 
Rhoda, jerking her horse’s head around. 

The other animals followed- Whether the three 
Eastern girls were willing to be led away by Rhoda 
or not, their mounts would instinctively keep to- 
gether. 

Around them the wind still shrieked, coming in 
gusts now and then that utterly drowned the voices 
of the girls. Rhoda seemed to have great confi- 


1 70 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

dence, but her friends felt that their situation was 
quite desperate. 

The deeper they went into the gulch, however, the 
more they became sheltered from the wind. This 
was merely a slash in the hillside; it was not a 
canon. Rhoda told them there was no farther exit 
to the place; it was merely a pocket in the hill. 

“It has been used more than once as a corral for 
horses,” she explained. “But there’s an old bears’ 
den up here ” 

“Oh, mercy!” screamed Grace. “A bear!” 

“Hasn’t been one seen about here since I was 
born,” declared Rhoda quickly. “But that old den 
is just the place for us.” 

Within ten minutes they reached a huge bowlder 
that had broken away from the west side of the 
gulch. Behind it was an opening among other rocks. 
Indeed, this whole rift in the hillside was a mass of 
broken rock. It was hard for the ponies to pick a 
path between the stones. And it had grown very 
dark, too. 

The other girls would never have dared venture 
into the dark pocket behind that bowlder had Rhoda 
not led them. She dismounted, and, seizing her 
pony’s bridle, started around the huge rock and into 
the cavity. 

“Must we take in the horses, too?” cried Bess. 
“I never!” 

“I won’t balk at a stable, if we can get out of this 


In the Old Bear Den 


171 

wind,” Nan declared. “Go ahead, Grade, dear. 
Don’t cry. Walter will be all right.” 

“But. do you think we shall be all right?” asked 
Bess of her chum, when Grace had started in behind 
Rhoda. 

“I guess we’ll have to take Rhoda’s word for it,” 
admitted Nan. “This is no place to stop and ar- 
gue the question, my dear.” 

She made Bess go before, and she brought up the 
rear of the procession. It was as dark as pitch in 
that cavern. The entrance was just about wide 
enough for the horses to get through, and not much 
higher than a stable door. 

“Here we are!” shouted the Western girl, and 
by the echoing of her voice Nan knew that Rhoda 
must be in a much larger cavern than this passage. 

The others pressed on. The ponies’ hoofs rang 
upon solid rock. The roaring of the tornado 
changed to a lower key as they went on. From 
somewhere light enough entered for Nan to begin 
to distinguish objects in the cave. 

The horses stamped and whinnied to each other. 
Nan’s pinto snuggled his nose into her palm. The 
animal’s satisfaction in having got into this refuge 
encouraged the girl. 

“Well, I guess we’re all right in here,” she said 
aloud. “The ponies seem to like it.” 

“Cheerful Grigg!” scoffed Bess. “My! I never 


172 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

thought I’d live to see the time that I should he 
glad to take refuge in a bears’ den.” 

“O-o-oh, don’t!” begged Grace. 

“Don’t be a goosie,” said Bess. “The bear won’t 
hear us. He must be dead a long time now, if he 
hasn’t been heard of since Rhoda was born.” 

“Well, you know, bears hibernate,” ventured 
Grace Mason. “They go to sleep and don’t wake 
up, sometimes, for ever and ever so long.” 

“Not for fifteen years,” laughed Rhoda. 

Just then, to their surprise, not to say their 
fright, there came to their ears a most startling 
sound out of the darkness of the cave! 

It was a more uncanny noise than any of the 
young people had ever in their lives heard before. 
Rising higher, and higher, shriller and yet more 
shrill, the sound seemed to shudder through the 
cavern as though caused by some supernatural 
source. There was nothing human in a single note 
of it! 

“Oh!” whispered the shaking Grace, “is that a 
bear?” 

“Never in this world!” exclaimed Nan. 

“I don’t know what it is,” asserted Bess. “But 
if it is a bear, or not, I hope it doesn’t do it again.” 

“Rhoda, what do you think ?” demanded Nan, in 
an awed undertone. 

“Hush!” returned the Western girl. “Listen.” 

“I don’t want to listen — not to that thing,” de- 


In the Old Bear Den 173 

dared Bess, with conviction. “It’s worse than a 
banshee. Worse than the black ghost at the Lake- 
view Hall boathouse.” 

Once more the noise reached them ; and if at first 
it had startled the four girls, it now did more. For 
the ponies whose bridles they held, showed disturb- 
ance. Grace’s mount lifted his head and answered 
the strange cry with a whinny that startled the 
echoes of the cavern like bats about their ears. 

“Oh, don’t. Do Fuss!” commanded Grace. 
“Don’t be such a bad little horse. You make it 
worse.” 

“He surely would not have neighed if that was 
a bear shouting at us,” declared Bess. 

“Bear, nonsense!” scoffed Rhoda. 

“Well, put a better name to it,” challenged Bess. 

For a third time the eerie cry rang out. The noise 
completely silenced Rhoda for the moment. Nan 
said, with more apparent confidence than she really 
felt: 

“One thing, it doesn’t seem to come nearer. But 
it gives me the shakes.” 

“It can’t be that terrible wind blowing into the 
cavern by some hole, can it ?” queried Bess. 

“You are more inventive than practical, Bess,” 
said her chum. “That is not the wind, I guaran- 
tee.” 

“But what is it, then?” 

“I wish I could tell you, girls. But I really cati- 


174 Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

not guess,” admitted the girl of Rose Ranch, at 
last. 

“You never heard it before?” queried Grace. 

“I certainly never did !” 

“Say! I ho-ope I’ll never hear it again,” de- 
clared Bess. 

But her hope did not come true. Almost imme- 
diately the prolonged subterranean murmur echoed 
and reechoed through the cavern, dying away at 
last in a choking sound that frightened the quar- 
tette of girls deplorably. 

Grace began to sob. Nan and Bess were really 
frightened dumb for the time. Rhoda Hammond 
felt that she should keep up their courage. 

“Don’t, Gracie. Don’t get all worked up. There 
must be some sensible explanation of the sound. It 
is nothing that is going to hurt us ” 

“How do you know?” demanded Grace. 

“Because, if it was any animal that might attack 
us, it surely would have come nearer. And it 
hasn’t. Besides, if it were a dangerous beast, the 
ponies would have shown signs of uneasiness long 
since.” 

In fact, this was a very sensible statement, and 
Nan Sherwood, for one, quite appreciated the fact. 

“Of course you are right, Rhoda. We are in 
no danger,” 

“You don’t know that,” grumbled Bess. 

“Yes, I do. Unless the sound is made by some 


In the Old Bear Den 175 

human being. And that seems impossible. There 
is no wild man about, of course, Rhoda?” 

“Not that I ever heard of,” said the girl of Rose 
Ranch. “Nobody wilder than our cowboys,” and 
she tried to laugh. 

“Well, then, we must not pay any attention to 
the noise,” said Nan, the practical. 

“Come on, now,” said Rhoda, starting to one 
side with the pony she led. “Bring them all over 
here and I will hobble them. Then we can find 
some place to sit down and wait for the storm to 
pass. It will rain terribly after the wind. It al- 
ways does.” 

“That is all right, Rhoda. I had forgotten about 
the tornado,” said Bess. “What I want to know 
is : Have you got your rifle safe ?” 

“Of course. And it is loaded.” 

“Then I feel better,” Bess declared. “For if that 
dreadful thing — whatever it is — comes near us, you 
can shoot it.” 

“I can see plainly,” laughed Nan, “that you do 
not believe the noise is supernatural, Bess.” 

“Humph ! maybe you could shoot a ghost. Who 
knows ?” 


CHAPTER XXII 


AFTER THE TEMPEST 

The party had not got away from the scene of 
the round-up so very early in the morning; and 
the detour to reach the herd of antelopes had taken 
considerable time. It was therefore well past noon 
when the tornado had sent the four schoolgirls 
scurrying for the old bears’ den. 

But by that time it was almost pitch dark outside 
as well as inside the cavern. The tornado had 
quenched the sunlight and made it seem more like 
midnight than mid-afternoon. 

The situation of the girls in the cavity in the west 
side of the gulch might not have been so awe-inspir- 
ing had it not been for the mysterious noise that 
had echoed and reechoed through the hollow rock. 

Rhoda hobbled the horses in the dark at one side 
of the cave, and did it just as skillfully as though 
she could see. It seemed to the other girls as 
though fooling around the ponies’ heels was a dan- 
gerous piece of work ; but the ranch girl laughed at 
them when they mentioned it. 

“These ponies don’t kick, except each other when 
176 


After the Tempest 177 

they are playing. I wouldn’t hobble them at all, 
only I don’t know where they might stray in the 
dark. There may be holes in here — we don’t know. 
I don’t want any of you to separate from the others 
while we are in here.” 

“Don’t you be afraid of that, Rhoda,” said Grace 
Mason earnestly. “I am clinging to Nan Sher- 
wood’s hand, and I wouldn’t let go for a farm !” 

“As it happens, Gracie,” said Bess Harley’s voice, 
“you chance to be hanging to my hand. But it is 
all right. I am just as good a hanger as you are. 
I don’t love the dark, either.” 

Nan herself felt that she would not be fearful in 
this place if it had not been for the queer sound 
from the depths of the cave. Whatever it was, 
when it was repeated, and the horses stamped and 
whinnied as though in answer. Nan felt a fear of 
the unknown that she could scarcely control. 

“What do you think it is, Rhoda?” she whispered 
in the ranch girl’s ear. “It is so mournful and un- 
canny !” 

“It’s got me guessing,” admitted the ranch girl. 
“I never heard that there was anything up here in 
the hills to be afraid of. And I don’t believe it is 
anything that threatens us now. But I admit it 
gives me the creeps every time I hear it.” 

On the other hand die roaring of the tornado 
was heard for more than an hour after they en- 
tered ihe cave. They had come so far from the 


178 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

mouth of the old bears’ den that the sound of the 
elements was muffled. 

But by and by they knew that sound was changed. 
Instead of the roaring of the wind, torrents of rain 
dashed upon the rocks outside the cave. The girls 
ventured through the tunnel again, for Rhoda as- 
sured them that very heavy rain usually followed 
the big wind. 

“Daddy says the wind goes before to blow a 
man’s roof off, so that the rain that comes after 
can soak him through and through. Oh, girls !” ex- 
claimed their hostess, who was ahead, “it certainly 
is raining.” 

“I — should — ^say!” gasped Bess. 

The moisture blew into the cavern’s mouth ; but 
that was not much. What startled them was that 
they were slopping about in several inches of water, 
and this water seemed to be rising. 

“There’s been a cloudburst back in the hills,” de- 
clared Rhoda. “This gulch runs a stream.” 

“Oh, poor Walter!” cried Grace, sobbing again. 
“He’ll be drowned.” 

“Of course not, goosie!” said Bess. “He’s on 
horseback.” 

“But if this gulley is full of water ” 

“It isn’t full,” said Nan. “If it were running 
that deep, we’d be drowned in here ourselves.” 

“We are pretty well bottled up,” admitted Rhoda, 
coming back from the entrance, out of which she 


After the Tempest 179 

had tried to peer. She was wet, too. “The water 
is a roaring torrent in the bottom of the gully. You 
can see it has risen to the mouth of this cave, and 
is still rising. 

“But we need not worry about that. The floor 
of the cavern inside is even higher than where we 
stand. It would take an awfully hard and an 
awfully long rain to fill this cavern. And I don’t 
imagine this will be a second deluge.” 

Her light laugh cheered them. But it was an ex- 
perience that none of them was likely to forget. 
Rhoda’s courage was augmented by the actions of 
the ponies. Those intelligent brutes showed no 
signs of fear — not even when the mysterious sound 
was repeated; therefore the ranch girl was quite 
sure no harm menaced them. 

Time and again the girls ventured through the 
tunnel. The water did not rise much higher; but 
it did not decrease. Nightfall must be approaching. 
Bess and Grace both wore wrist watches; but they 
had no matches and it was too dark to see the faces 
of the timepieces. 

The girls were growing very hungry; but that 
was no criterion, for they had eaten no lunch. Time 
is bound to drag by very slowly when people are 
thrust into such a position as this ; it might not be 
near supper time after all. 

“I do hope we shan’t have to stay here over night. 


i8o Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 


Can’t we wade out through the gully, Rhoda?” 
Grace asked. 

“As near as I could judge, the mouth of this cave 
was about ten feet higher than the bottom of the 
gulch,” returned the ranch girl. “The water seems 
still to fill the gulch as high as the entrance. Can 
you wade through ten feet of water ?” 

“Oh!” murmured Grace. 

“Wish I had a pair of Billy’s stilts,” said Bess. 
“It might be done.” 

“Do you suppose they will come hunting for 
us?” Nan asked. 

“Who?” asked Rhoda practically. “Let me tell 
you, every boy on the place will be having his hands 
full right now. I don’t think the main line of the 
tornado struck across toward the house. At least, 
I hope not. But I bet it has done damage enough. 

“If it hit the herds of horses — those wild ones — 
good-by! They will all have to be rounded up 
again. And the cattle ! Well, make up your minds 
the boys are going to have their hands full with the 
herds for a couple of days after this. They won’t 
have time to come hunting for a crowd of scared 
girls.” 

“Oh !” said Grace again. 

“And why should they?” laughed the ranch girl. 
“We are all intact — arms and legs and horses in 
good shape. I guess we will find our way home in 
time.” 


After the Tempest i8i 

“But Walter?” asked Walter’s sister. 

“He may be home already. Anyway, I don’t be- 
lieve he drifted into this gulch behind us. He 
missed us somehow.” 

Just the same she kept going to the mouth of the 
tunnel to try to look out. And it was for more 
than merely to discover if the rain had ceased. Se- 
cretly she, too, was worried about Walter. 

Gradually the rain ceased falling. Nor did the 
water rise any farther in the tunnel’s mouth. But 
the heavens must still be overcast, for it continued 
as dark outside the cave as in. 

Finally Nan had an idea that was put into im- 
mediate practice. She broke the crystal of Bess’s 
watch and by feeling the hands carefully made out 
that the time was half past six. 

“That’s half past six at night, not in the morn- 
ing, I suppose,” said Bess lugubriously. “But, oh, 
my! I am as hungry as though it were day-after- 
to-morrow’s breakfast time.” 

“Oh, we’ll get out of here after a while,” said 
Rhoda cheerfully. “We shall not have to kill and 
eat the horses ” 

“Or each other,” sighed Bess. “Isn’t that nice !” 

Again they ventured out to the mouth of the 
tunnel. The strange screaming back in the cave 
had begun again, and all four of the girls secretly 
wished to get as far away from the sound as pos- 
sible. 


182 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 


The water had fallen, and the rain had entirely 
ceased. There was only a puddle in a little hollow 
at the mouth of the cave. The roaring of the 
stream through the gorge was not so loud. 

“It will all soon be over — What’s that?” 

Nan’s cry was echoed by Grace: “Is it Walter? 
Walter!” she cried. 

A figure loomed up from around the comer of 
the bowlder that half masked the entrance to the 
old bears’ den. But the figure made no answer to 
the challenge. Surely it could not be Grace’s 
brother ! 

“Who’s that?” demanded Nan again. 

Meanwhile Rhoda had darted back into the cave. 
Dark as it was, she found her pony and drew the 
rifle from its case. With this weapon in her hand 
she came ranning to the entrance again, and ad- 
vanced the muzzle of the rifle toward the figure 
that had remained silent and motionless before the 
frightened girls. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


THE LETTER FROM JUANITA 

“You’d better speak up pronto!” exclaimed the 
girl from Rose Ranch in an unshaken tone. “I’m 
going to fire if you don’t.” 

“Oh, Rhoda!” shrieked Bess. 

“It isn’t Walter!” exclaimed Grace. 

“Speak! What do you want? Who are you?” 
demanded the courageous Rhoda. 

“No shoot, Thenorita!” gasped a frightened 
voice from the looming figure. “I go !” 

In a moment he was gone. He had disappeared 
around the corner of the bowlder. 

“For mercy’s sake!” gasped Bess, “what does that 
mean ?” 

“Who was it?” asked Nan again. 

“A Mexican. But he wasn’t one of our boys,” 
said Rhoda. “I never heard his voice before. Be- 
sides, if he had been from the ranch he would not 
have acted so queerly. I don’t like it.” 

“Do you think he means us harm?” queried Nan. 

“I don’t know what he means; but I mean him 
harm if he comes fooling around us again,” de- 
183 


184 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

dared Rhoda. ‘‘I never heard of such actions. 
Why! nine times out of ten he would have been 
shot first and the matter of who he was decided 
afterward/’ 

^‘Why, Rhoda ! how awfully wicked that sounds. 
You surely would not shoot a man!” Bess Harley’s 
tone showed her horror. 

don’t know what I would do if I had to. There 
was something wrong with that fellow. Let me 
tell you, people do not creep up on you in the dark 
as he did — not out here in the open country — un- 
less they mean mischief. If a man approaches a 
campfire or a cabin, he hails. And that Mexi- 
can ” 

She did not finish the sentence; but her earnest- 
ness served to take Grace’s mind off the disappear- 
ance of Walter. She had something else to be 
frightened about! 

Rhoda was not trying to frighten her friends, 
however. That would be both needless and wicked. 
But she remembered the fact that there were sup- 
posedly strangers in the neighborhood, and she did 
not know who this Mexican lurking about the 
mouth of the bears’ den might be. 

The girls went back into the cave and sat down 
again. Rhoda held the rifle across her lap, and 
they all listened for sounds from the entrance to the 
cave. But all they heard was the stamping of the 


The Letter from Juanita 185 

horses and now and then the shrill and eerie cry 
from the depths of the cavern. 

When they made another trip to the mouth of the 
tunnel, it seemed to be lighter outside, late in the 
evening as it was, and the torrent in the gulch had 
receded greatly. 

“I believe we can get out now,” said Rhoda. 
“You take the rifle, Grace. You are the best shot. 
And I will go after our ponies.” 

“Oh, no! I would be afraid,” gasped the girl. 
“Give the gun to Nan.” 

So Nan took Rhoda’s weapon while the ranch 
girl went to unhobble the ponies and lead her own 
to the cave’s mouth. The other three followed doc- 
ilely enough. 

Nan did not expect to fire the rifle if the Mexican 
— or anybody else — should appear. But she 
thought she could frighten the intruder just as much 
as Rhoda had. 

When the latter and the ponies arrived, Bess ut- 
tered a sigh of relief. 

“I certainly am glad to get out of that old hole 
in the ground. It’s haunted,” she declared, “And 
I want to get away from this place and keep away 
from it as long as we are at Rose Ranch. This has 
been one experience !” 

“And you wouldn’t have missed it for a farm,” 
Nan said to her. “I know how you’ll talk when 
we get back to Lakeview Hall,” 


1 86 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

“Oh! won’t I?” and Bess really could chuckle. 
“Won’t Laura turn green with envy?” 

They mounted their ponies after pulling up the 
cinches a little, and Rhoda again went ahead. The 
ponies splashed down into the running stream ; but 
they were sure-footed and did not seem to be much 
frightened by the river that had so suddenly risen 
in the bottom of the gulch. 

They were only a few minutes in wading out of 
the gully. When the party came out on the plain 
the ponies were still hock deep in water. The whole 
land seemed to have become saturated and over- 
flowed by the cloudburst. 

“When we do get a rain here it is usually what 
the boys call a humdinger,” said Rhoda. “Now, 
let’s hurry home.” 

Just as she spoke there sounded a shout behind 
them. The girls, startled, drew in their horses. 
The latter began to whinny, and Rhoda said, with 
satisfaction : 

“I reckon that’s Walter now. The ponies kno\7 
that horse, anyway.” 

The splash of approaching hoofs was heard after 
the girls had shouted in unison. Then they recog- 
nized the voice of the missing boy: 

“Hi! Grace! Nan! Are you there?” 

“Oh, Walter!” shrieked his sister, starting her 
pony in Ws direction. “Are you hurt?” 


The Letter from Juanita 187 

“I’m mighty wet,” declared Walter, riding up. 
‘‘Are you all here ?” 

“Most of us. What hasn’t been scared off us,” 
said Bess. “And, of course, we are starved.” 

“Well, I hung on to the antelope. Want some, 
raw?” laughed the boy. “Cracky! what a storm 
this was.” 

“It was pretty bad,” said Nan. 

“What happened to you?” asked Rhoda. 

“I missed you, somehow. I don’t know how it 
was,” said the boy. 

“You must have tried to guide your pony,” Rhoda 
said. 

“Yes.” 

“That is where you were wrong. He would 
probably have found us if you had let him have his 
head.” 

“Well, I got under the shelter of a rock out of 
the wind,” the boy said. “But when it began to 
rain — blooey !” 

“Well, thank goodness,” said Nan, “it is all over 
and nobody is hurt.” 

“But, oh, Walter!” cried his sister, “we got into 
a haunted cave, and Mexicans came to shoot us, 
and Rhoda threatened to shoot them, so they went 
away, and ” 

“Whew! what’s all this?” he demanded. “You 
are crazy. Sis.” 


1 88 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 


“Not altogether,” laughed Nan. “We did have 
some adventure, didn’t we, girls?” 

And when Walter heard the particulars he agreed 
that the experience must have been exciting. He 
rode along beside Nan in the rear of the others, as 
they cantered toward the ranch house, and he put 
a number of questions to her regarding the mys- 
terious sound in the cavern. 

“It must have been the wind,” said Nan. “Though 
it didn’t sound like it.” 

“What did it sound like?” asked her friend. 

“I don’t know that I can tell you, Walter. It 
seemed so strange — shrill, and sort of stifled. 
Why! it was as uncanny as the neigh of that big 
horse we saw calling to the herd the other morn- 
ing.” 

“The outlaw?” asked Walter. 

“Yes.” 

“Maybe it was another horse,” he said doubt- 
fully. 

“How could that be ? In that cave ? Why didn’t 
it come nearer, then? Oh, it couldn’t have been 
another horse.” 

“I don’t know,” ruminated Walter. “You saw 
that Mexican, too. There may have been some con- 
nection between him and that sound.” 

“How could that be possible?” asked Nan, in 
wonder. 

“Well, if he had a horse, say? And he had hid- 


The Letter from Juanita 189 

den it deeper in the cave? !A!nd had hitched it so it 
could not run away? How does that sound?” 

“Awfully ingenious, Walter,” admitted Nan, 
with a laugh. “But, somehow, it is not convinc- 
ing.” 

“OH, all right, my lady. Then we will accept 
Grace’s statement that the cave is haunted,” and he 
laughed likewise. 

They arrived at the ranch house within the next 
two hours. They found everything about head- 
quarters quite intact, for the tornado had swept 
past this spot without doing any damage. Mrs. 
Hammond met them in a manner that showed she 
had not become very anxious, and Rhoda had 
warned her friends to say little in her mother’s 
hearing about their strange experience. 

Nor was anything said to Mrs. Hammond re- 
garding the raid by the Mexican horse thieves. She 
supposed her husband was absent from the house 
because of the tornado. That, of course, had scat- 
tered the cattle tremendously. 

The girls themselves did not think much just then 
of the stolen horses and the posse that had started 
on the trail of the thieves. But another incident 
held their keen interest, and that connected with 
renegade Mexicans. 

There was a letter waiting for Rhoda when she 
arrived — a letter addressed in a cramped and un- 


190 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

familiar hand. But when she opened it she called 
her friends about her with : 

“Do see here! What do you suppose this is? 
It’s from that funny girl, Juanita O’Harra.” 

“From Juanita?” asked Nan. “More about the 
treasure?” 

“Oh! The treasure!” added Bess, in delight. “I 
had almost forgotten about that.” 

“Listen !” exclaimed the ranch girl. “She writes 
better English than she speaks. I should not won- 
der if there were an English school down in Hon- 
oragas.” 

“Is she home again, then?” demanded Nan. 

“So it seems. Listen, I say,” and Rhoda began 
to read: 

“ ‘Miss R. Hammond, 

“ ‘Rose Ranch. 

“ 'Dear Miss : — 

“ ‘I have arrived to my mother at Honoragas, 
and I take this pen in hand to let you know that 
Juan Sivello, Lobarto’s nephew, who has come from 
the South — ^he is one of those who lisp ’ ” 

“What does she mean by that?” interrupted Bess, 
in curiosity. 

“The Mexicans of the southern provinces — many 
of them — do not pronounce the letter ‘s’ clearly. 


The Letter from Juanita 191 

They lisp,” explained Rhoda. “Now let me read 
her letter.” Then she pursued : 

“ ‘ — one of those who lisp — and it is said of him 
that he has of his uncle’s hand a map, or the like, 
which shows where the treasure lies buried at Rose 
Ranch. This news comes to my mother’s ears by 
round-about. We do not know for sure. But 
Juan Sivello is one bad man like his uncle, Lobarto. 
It is the truth I write with this pen. Juan has col- 
lected together, it is said round-about, some men 
who once rode the ranges with Lobarto, and they 
go up into your country. For what? It is too 
easy, Miss. It is ’ ” 

“Oh ! Oh !” giggled Bess. “What delicious 
slang!” 

“I guess foreigners learn American slang before 
they learn the grammar,” laughed Rhoda. 

“What else, Rhoda?” cried Grace. 

“ Tt is to search out the treasure buried so long 
ago by Lobarto. If the map Juan has is true, he 
will find it. Then my mother will lose forever 
what Lobarto stole from our hacienda. Is it not 
possible that the Sehor Hammond, thy father, 
should get soldiers of the Americano army, and 
round up those bad Mexicanos and Juan Sivello, 
take from him the map and find the treasure? My 
mother will pay much dinero for reward. 


192 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 


** ‘Believe me, Sehorita R. Hammond, your much 
good friend. 


“ ‘Juanita O’Harra.’ 


“She doesn’t sound at all as she talked that day 
she caught me in the woods. Nan,” added Rhoda 
with a laugh. 

“The poor girl!” commented Nan. “I wish we 
could find her mother’s money.” 

“Say! I wish we could find all that treasure for 
ourselves,” cried Bess. “No use giving it all to 
your Juanita.” 

“Do you suppose, girls,” said Rhoda thought- 
fully, “that those men we saw coming through the 
gap in the Blue Buttes were this Sivello and his 
gang?” 

“Are they horse thieves ?” cried Bess. 

“Why not ?’^ 

“And how about that fellow you were going to 
shoot over at the bears’ den?” asked Grace sud- 
denly. “Why, Rhoda, that fellow lisped. He said 
‘Thenorita.’ I heard him.” 

The other girls all acclaimed Grace Mason’s good 
memory. Spurred by her words they all recalled 
now that the strange man who had so frightened 
them at the mouth of the bears’ den had used in his 
speech “th” for “s.” 


CHAPTER XXIV 


UNCERTAINTIES 

The quartette of girl chums from Lakeview Hall 
and Walter Mason, to whom the girls at once re- 
vealed the contents of Juanita’s letter, were greatly 
excited over the Mexican treasure and the seekers 
therefor. 

Without doubt the Mexican girl at Honoragas 
had written the truth, as she knew it, to Rhoda. 
Lobarto, the bandit, had met his death five or six 
years before. It seemed quite probable that he 
should have sent word to his relatives in the South 
of the existence of his plunder and the place where 
he had been forced to cache it. When he was 
chased out of American territory, the treasure he 
had left behind would become a legacy for his rela- 
tives if they could find it and were as inclined to 
dishonesty as Lobarto himself. 

This nephew of the old bandit chief, Juan Si- 
vello, seemed eager to find the hidden treasure ; and 
if he was really supplied with a diagram indicating 
the location of the cache, Juan would probably make 
a serious attempt to uncover it. 

193 


194 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

The question was, as Walter Mason very sen- 
sibly pointed out, having come up to Rose Ranch 
for this particular purpose, would the Mexicans en- 
danger their plans by making a raid on the horses, 
and so be chased away without securing the buried 
riches of Lobarto? 

“Doesn’t seem reasonable, after all, to me,” said 
Walter, “that the Mexicans your father and the 
cowboys set out in chase of are the same crowd that 
Juanita says started up here to find the treasure. 
There are two gangs of ’em.” 

“You may be right, Walter,” said Rhoda. 

“It sounds very reasonable,” agreed Nan. 

“You are a very smart boy, Walter,” said Bess. 
“I don’t see how you do it.” 

Walter gave the last saucy Miss a grin as he 
pursued the topic: “That fellow who scared you 
girls out of your seven wits at the bears’ den did 
not belong to the gang of horse thieves. That’s a 
cinch. They were a hundred miles to the southwest 
of that place, for sure, and heading back to Mex- 
ico.” 

“Reckon you are right, Walter,” again agreed 
Rhoda. 

“Why, if that Mexican we saw — the man who 
lisped — was looking for the buried treasure, per- 
haps it is right around that den. Maybe Lobarto 
hid it in that hole.” 

“I told you that cave was haunted !” Grace cried. 


Uncertainties 


195 

“They say when the old pirates buried their loot 
they used to leave a dead pirate to watch it,” 
chuckled Bess. 

“Believe me!” said Natt, with emphasis, “if that 
was a dead bandit we heard shrieking in that cave, 
he must still be suffering a great deal. But I scorn 
such superstitions. And I should like to go back 
there with torches or lanterns and look for the 
treasure-trove myself.” 

“Fine!” cried Bess. “I’ll go.” 

“Not while that Mexican is around there,” ob- 
jected Grace. 

“Why, he was much more afraid of Rhoda’s gun 
than we were of him,” Bess told her. 

“I don’t know how badly he was scared; but I 
know very well how much I was frightened. Noth- 
ing would lead me back there — not even a certainty 
of riches — unless we have a big crowd with us.” 

“I don’t know that any harm is to be feared from 
that fellow,” Rhoda said. “But until daddy returns 
and I talk with him, I won’t agree to any search. 
We want to know what these fellows are after, it 
is true. But daddy will want a finger in the pie,” 
and she smiled. 

So they had to possess their souls with patience 
while they awaited the return of the ranchman. 
When Mr. Hammond came back on the following 
day he confessed that the Mexican thieves had got 


196 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

away and over the Border with the band of horses 
from the Long Bow outfit. 

“That big wind cornin’ up, and the rain follow- 
in’, spoiled the trail for us,” the ranchman said, 
“Guess you believe now, children, what I told you 
about our tornadoes, eh ?” 

“Including the poor pigs’ tails being twisted the 
wrong way — yes, sir,” said Bess with gravity. “Oh, 
it’s all true.” 

When Mr. Hammond heard of their adventures 
at the bears’ den he became serious at once. But 
it was not the strange noise they heard that dis- 
turbed his serenity. It was regarding the unknown 
Mexican lurking about the gulch. 

“Got to look him up. Maybe nobody but some 
harmless critter. Can’t always tell. But there is 
one sure thing,” added Mr. Hammond slowly. “We 
crossed the trail of that gang of horse thieves where 
they broke up into two parties. One party skirted 
the range, going north. We followed the others 
because they were driving the stolen critters. 

“That’s the upshot of it — the rats ! If what this 
Mexican girl friend of yours, Rhoda, says is so, 
that Sivello and his party made a clean-up of the 
Long Bow horses, and the bulk of them started 
back for the Border. Maybe their leader and his 
personal friends came up this way, thinking to make 
another search for old Lobarto’s plunder, 

“I swanny! I wish they’d find the stutf and get 


Uncertainties 


197 

away with it. Every once in a while a bunch of 
them comes up here and makes us trouble; and the 
excuse is always that old Mex. treasure. My idea, 
they always have their eyes on our cattle and horses. 
If they don’t find the gold, they pick up a few 
strays, and it always pays ’em for makin’ the trip 
up here.” 

“But can’t you keep the Mexicans from coming 
here?” asked Walter. 

“If they’d keep their thievin’ hands off things, 
I wouldn’t care if they hunted the treasure all the 
time,” said Mr. Hammond. “They’ll never find it.” 

“Oh, Daddy!” exclaimed Rhoda, “we were just 
thinking of hunting for it ourselves. Can’t we? 
Don’t you believe ” 

“No law against your huntin’ for it all you want 
to,” said her father, laughing. “Go ahead. I 
didn’t say you couldn’t hunt for it; I only said I 
did not think it would be found. Lobarto hid it 
too well.” 

“But, Daddy! you don’t encourage us,” cried 
Rhoda. “And we are all so interested. We want 
really to find the money so that Juanita and her 
mother need not be poor.” 

“Well, well!” exclaimed the ranchman, “do you 
want me to go out and bury some money, so you 
can find it?” 

“No. But we want some of the boys to go with 


198 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

us. I want to search that old bears’ den, and the 
gulch there, and all about.” 

“Go to it, Honey-bird,” he said, patting her 
shoulder. “You shall have Hess and any other two 
boys you want. That’s enough to handle any little 
tad of Mexicans that may be hanging about up 
there. I’ll speak to Hess. Want to go to-mor- 
row ?” 

This plan was agreed to. Of course the girls 
and Walter did not want to rest after their excit- 
ing experiences at the round-up and afterward. 

“All you young people want to do,” Mr. Ham- 
mond declared, “is to keep moving!” 

Walter made certain preparations for a search of 
the bears’ den. One of the cowpunchers chosen to 
accompany the party was a good cook. Hesitation 
Kane took a pack horse with more of a camping 
outfit than would have been the case had there not 
been four girls in the party. 

“I don’t see,” drawled Mr. Hammond, “how you 
girls manage to travel at all without a Saratoga 
trunk apiece. Got your curlin’ -tongs, Rhoda? And 
be sure and take a lookin’ glass and white gloves.” 

“Now, Daddy ! you know you malign me,” 
laughed his daughter. “And as for these other 
girls, they fuss less than any girls you ever saw 
from the East.” 

“I don’t know. I’m kind of sorry for that pack 


Uncertainties 


199 

horse,” chuckled her father, who delighted to 
plague them. 

They might have made the trip to the gulch where 
the girls had taken refuge from the tornado and re- 
turned the next day; but they proposed to trail 
around the foothills for several days. Indeed, even 
the cowboys in the party had become interested 
once more in the buried treasure. 

“It strikes us about once in so often,” said the 
cook, as they started away from the corrals, “and 
some of us git bit regular with this treasure-hunting 
bug. Long’s we know the treasure is somewhere 
hid and there is a chance of finding it, we are bound 
to feel that way. Then we waste the boss’s time 
and wear ourselves out hunting Lobarto’s cache. 
Course, we won’t never find it; but it is loads of 
fun.” 

“I declare !” cried Rlioda, tossing her head, “you 
are just as encouraging, Tom Collins, as daddy is. 
I never heard the like !” 


CHAPTER XXV 


THE STAMPEDE 

The enthusiasm of the girls and Walter Mason 
did not falter, however, no matter how much the 
older people scoffed at the idea of the treasure hid- 
den by the Mexican bandit being found near Rose 
Ranch. They wenCforth from the ranch house with 
some little expectation of returning with the plunder. 

Hesitation Kane, of course, did not try to dis- 
courage them. Even a buried treasure could not 
excite the horse wrangler, in the least. 

“I guess an Apache raid would not ruffle Hesi- 
tation’s soul,” Rhoda observed. “He is quite the 
calmest person I ever saw.” 

Since the tornado the cattle of the main herd 
of Rose Ranch had been broken into small bunches 
and were feeding in the higher pastures. The 
swales and rich arroyos, in which the grass had 
been so lush, had been badly drowned out by the 
flood. It would be several weeks before the low- 
lands offered good pasturage again. 

The visitors learned that where they had camped 
at the time of the round-up, the river had risen and 


200 


201 ' 


The Stampede 

washed away every trace of the encampment. In- 
deed, Rolling Spring Valley had been under water 
for miles on either flank of the main stream. A 
bunch of young horses belonging to Rose Ranch, 
having been confined in a small corral, were drowned 
at that time. 

“There went several thousand dollars,” Rhoda 
explained, when she told her friends of the trag- 
edy. “The losses as well as the gains in the ranch- 
ing and stock raising business are large. If daddy 
sells a big herd of cattle, or a fine bunch of horses, 
he takes in many thousands of dollars, it is true. 

“But it is hard to compute the profit or loss on 
the sale. So many things are likely to happen. 
Perhaps some disease hits the herd. Thousands of 
cattle may die in some epidemic. Once wolves came 
down in the winter, when I was little^ — I remember 
it clearly — and killed more than a hundred steers 
within a mile of the house.” 

“Oh, dear me, Rhoda! don’t tell us about any 
more wild animals,” wailed Grace. “I think the 
West would be a much nicer place if they had tamed 
all the wild creatures before man ever moved into 
it.” 

“You are not much of a sport. Sis,” said her 
brother, laughing. “It must have been really great 
around here when the buffaloes and Indians ran 
wild. You can’t remember that, Rhoda, can you?” 


202 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

“I should hope not!” gasped Rhoda. “Do you 
think I am as old as Mrs, Cupp?” 

“Oh! Oh!” cried Bess. “Poor Cupp!” 

“I never saw a buffalo,” confessed Rhoda, “And 
I never heard the war whoop. And an Indian in 
war paint and other togs would scare me just as 
much as it would Grade. But daddy remembers 
them all. He shot buffaloes for the army, scouted 
for General Pope, chased a part of Geronimo’s band 
into Mexico, and was a Texas Ranger when the 
Border Ruffians were really in existence. He can 
tell you all about those times; only mother doesn’t 
let him.” 

“There ! I suppose she doesn’t like to hear about 
savages and other awful things,” Grace said, with 
satisfaction. 

“No-o ; it isn’t that,” Rhoda returned with twin- 
kling eyes. “But mother does not let him talk about 
those times because it makes daddy out so much 
older than she is!” 

Tom Collins, the cook, was a talkative man, if 
Hesitation Kane was not. Tom reined his pony 
into the group of young people and began spinning 
yarns, some of which perhaps had but a thin warp 
of truth. He thought it was his privilege to 
“string along the tenderfoots” a little. One thing 
he told the girls and Walter, however, interested 
them immensely. 

“You know, I came pretty near roping that black 


The Stampede 203 

outlaw the day of the tornado. Criminy, if I’d 
got him!” 

“Now, Tom, don’t tell us that,” commanded 
Rhoda. “You know there isn’t a horse on the 
ranch that can come anywhere near him in speed.” 

“That’s right,” admitted Tom. “But I come on 
him sudden and unexpected.” 

“How did it happen?” asked Walter. 

“Did you know the boss sent me home ahead of 
you folks from the rodeo? That’s how come I 
didn’t get to ride after those raiders with the other 
boys. I never do have no luck,” said Tom. “If it 
rained soup I wouldn’t have no spoon, and a hole 
in my hat. 

“Well, it was this-a-way: I was riding right 
along yonder, making for the ranch house, and not 
thinking of nothing — ^not a thing! Crossing the 
mouth of one of them gulches — ’twasn’t far beyond 
the one where you gals took refuge from the big 
wind — all of a sudden my pony thro wed up his 
head and nickered, and out of the slot in the hill 
come trottin’ that big, handsome black critter! 

“My soul and body !” exclaimed the cowboy ear- 
nestly, “if I’d had my rope handy I could have put 
the noose right over his head ! It certainly did give 
me a shock.” 

“Humph!” said Rhoda, “it’s always the biggest 
fishes, daddy says, that get away.” 

“I guess the Big Boss is right,” agreed Tom Col- 


204 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

lins, “That black feller, he swung around on his 
hind laigs, and he skedaddled up that gulch. I 
knowed the place. It’s just a pocket, and not very 
deep ; but the sides couldn’t be dumb by a goat, let 
alone a hawse. 

“So I turns my pony into that hole and I got my 
rope ready, and says I to me : ‘Tom Collins, you’re 
going to either get an awful fall, or you’ll be the 
proudest man on the old Rose Ranch !’ ’* 

“And what happened?’’ asked Walter. 

“Well, I dunno. Either I’d been seeing things, 
or else that blame black outlaw is bad medicine. 
He seemed to e-vap-o-rate.’’ 

“Now, Tom!’’ admonished Rhoda. 

“Honest to pickles. Miss Rhody ! I wouldn’t fool 
you ’bout a serious matter. And this is it.” 

“You mean you lost the horse?” asked Nan. 

“In a blind pocket. Yes, ma’am! Criminy! I 
couldn’t believe it myself. I says to me: ‘Tom Col- 
lins! your cinches is slipped. That’s what is the 
matter.’ 

“But you know. Miss Rhody,” he added to the 
ranchman’s daughter, “your pa don’t allow nothing 
stronger than spring water on the ranch. I was as 
sober as a Greaser judge trying his brother-in-law 
for hawse stealin’. That’s what! 

“That old black capering Satan went flying up 
that gulch ; and me, I pulled my little roan in after 
him and got my rope coiled. I says to me: ‘You 


The Stampede 205 

ain’t astride nothin’ but a little roan goat that only 
knows cows; but you got the chancet of your life, 
Tom Collins, to make a killin’. That’s right!’ 

“That is a twisty gulch — I’ll show it to you while 
we’re up here prospectin’ — and all I could hear was 
old Blackie’s hoofs clattering, and once in a while 
he’d whistle. He’s got a neigh like a steam whistle, 

“Well,” pursued the cowboy, “all of a sudden 
the noise stopped. I couldn’t hear his hoofs nor 
his voice. And when I got around the next turn 
that give me a sight of the complete gulch, clear to 
the pocket, there wasn’t no hawse at all. He’d just 
gone up in smoke, or something. That’s what!” 

“What became of the horse?” cried Bess Harley. 

“There’s some joke in it,” Rhoda said doubtfully. 

“Honest to pickles!” said the cowpuncher ear- 
nestly, “I was scared blue myself. I ain’t no more 
superstitious than the next feller. But that cer- 
tainly got me. 

“I rid back to the mouth of the gulch, lookin’ all 
the way, and never seen a hoofprint to show me 
where he’d lighted out for. He couldn’t climb the 
sides of the gulch. And he didn’t hide out on me 
and let me go back and then dodge out o’ the gulch. 

“No, sir! There he was one minute, then the 
next he wasn’t there at all. I got back to the mouth 
of the gulch, and there I seen that old tornado 
a-comin’. You folks had passed me and ’scaped 
my attention. 


2 o 6 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

“Me and the roan just squatted down under a 
bank till the wind was over; then we made tracks 
for the ranch house ahead of the rain. Get 
soaked? Well, I should say! But somehow I 
didn’t care to stay around where that blame black 
Satan disappeared hisself so strange-like. No, sir.” 

“Tom, I think you have been stringing the long 
bow,” declared Rhoda, shaking her head. 

“Honest to pickles I” reiterated the cowboy. 
“Why — why. I’ll show you the very hole in the hill 
where it happened.” 

They laughed at that; but the Eastern girls and 
Walter were inclined to believe that the cowboy had 
told the truth — as far as he knew it. In some way 
the outlaw had managed to elude him. 

“Goodness!” murmured Walter to Nan, 
“wouldn’t it be great to catch that black horse ?” 

“He’s handsomer than your Prince,” agreed Nan. 

“He is that. I wonder where he went when 
Tom lost him?’' 

The treasure-hunting party did not go directly 
to the gulch in which the girls had had their ad- 
venture at the time of the tornado. A part of what 
Hesitation Kane had on his pack horse was to be 
delivered to an outfit herding a bunch of steers 
back in the hills a long distance. 

The girls and Walter had agreed to ride that 
way, stop over night with Steve’s outfit, and then 


The Stampede 207 

work down to the old bear den from the other di- 
rection — that is, from the north. 

They entered the foothills through a pleasant, 
winding valley which, had it not been for the marks 
of the recent cloudburst, would have been a beau- 
tiful trail. But it was considerably torn up by the 
water that had swept through it, a raging torrent. 

They found Steve’s outfit with the cattle — ^nearly 
a thousand head of them — feeding in two cup- 
shaped hollows chained by a narrow path. The 
hills were steep and rocky all around these hollows, 
and a dozen steers abreast would have choked the 
path between the two pastures. About half of the 
cattle were grazing in one hollow, and the other half 
in the second cup. 

The outfit gave the party a noisy welcome. These 
herders of cattle, working sometimes for weeks at 
a stretch without getting to the ranch house, and 
seeing only each other’s faces, certainly get lonely. 
A newcomer is hailed with joy. And of course the 
daughter of the Rose Ranch owner and her friends 
were doubly welcome to this outfit. 

The tent was set up for the girls ; but, as before, 
Walter roughed it with the cowpunchers. He was 
enjoying every minute of his experience on the 
ranch, whether his timid sister did or not ! 

A soft, balmy evening dropped down about the 
camp, which was established in the further cup be- 
tween the hills. As evening approached the cattle 


2o8 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

from the outside cup were driven into this inner 
enclosure. They could be cared for at night much 
more easily in one herd. 

Tom Collins and the outfit’s cook outvied each 
other in making supper. Then there followed two 
long hours of songs and stories and chaff. The 
boys badgered each other, but were very polite to 
the girls. 

Walter wanted to ride herd with the first watch, 
and this was agreed to. 

“That is, young fellow, you can ride if you can 
sing,” said Steve, the boss of the outfit, gravely. 

“Sing? Well, I don’t know. What kind of sing- 
ing? I’m not famous for my voice,” admitted the 
boy. 

“Just so’s you can sing something the cows like, 
it’ll be all right,” Steve told him. “If anything 
should happen, you have to sing. It keeps the cows 
from getting nervous.” 

“Maybe if I sing it will make them nervous,” 
suggested Walter, not so easily jollied. 

“You’d better learn Henery’s song, here,” said 
Steve. “Henery has one he calls ‘My Bonny Lies 
Over the Ocean,’ an’ he sings it in seven different 
keys and there’s forty stanzas to it. And when a 
cow hears that ” 

One of “Henery’s” boots sailed through the air 
just then, and Steve had to dodge it. Henry was 
not on the first watch. 


209 


The Stampede 

Walter went out with the first crew. Somebody 
lent him a slicker, for rain was prophesied. Steve 
said, drawlingly: 

“If it keeps on like this so wet, we might’s well 
be in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It’s rained 
twice in ten weeks.” 

Walter’s instructions were to keep just in sight of 
the man riding around the herd ahead of him, to 
take it easy, and not to do anything to disturb the 
quiet herd. Some of the cattle were lying down 
chewing their cud; others were moving slowly 
while they cropped the grass, all headed west Rid- 
ing herd seemed, after an hour or two, to be the 
dreariest kind of work to the Eastern boy. 

Then he noticed that there was a chill in the air 
and that distant lightning played on the clouds to 
the north. The cattle all got upon their feet. It 
did not appear that they were really unquiet; yet 
there was a certain tension in the air that they must 
have felt, as well as the herders. 

Suddenly there was a near-by flash of lightning 
followed by a peal of thunder. The camp remained 
quiet; but the cattle began to snort and paw the 
earth. Each flash showed Walter that the animals 
were crowding closer and closer together. They 
were still heading west. 

In the light of another dazzling bolt the boy be- 
held several horsemen riding down the other side 
of the cup shaped valley — the west side. They were 


210 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

not of this Rose Ranch outfit. Indeed, in that sin- 
gle glance he realized that they were not dressed 
like the cowpunchers. 

Who could these strangers be? He was about to 
ride faster and overtake one of the other herders 
and ask, when the thunder seemed to split the firma- 
ment right over the valley. A vivid blue flash lit 
up the whole arena. 

Walter saw one of the group of strange horsemen 
dash down toward the cattle, flying a slicker high 
over his head. This horseman made a frightful ob- 
ject charging along the front of the already un- 
easy steers. 

The latter wheeled. With loud bellowings and a 
thunder of hoofs, the herd started east — started 
full pelt for the narrow opening between the two 
hollows. 

It was a stampede I Walter had heard of such 
catastrophes; but he had never dreamed that a 
charging herd of cattle could make so fearful an 
appearance. His own horse snorted, jumped about, 
and started to run away with him ; and pull at the 
bit as Walter did, he could not at once gain con- 
trol of the terrified little beast. 


CHAPTER XXVI 

WHO AHE THEY? 


The enccimpment of Steve’s outfit, and therefore 
the tent in which the four girls were sheltered, was 
on the side of the hill to the south of the narrow 
path connecting the twin valleys. It seemed as 
though the chuck wagon and tent, as well as the 
horse corral, were well out of the path of the charg- 
ing cattle. 

But when Nan Sherwood and her companions, 
awakened by the louder peal of thunder, gazed out 
of the tent opening and gained, by aid of the light- 
ning, their initial glimpse of the stampede, it seemed 
as though a thousand bellowing throats and twice 
that number of tossing horns threatened the en- 
campment. 

“Grab your things and get out this way 1” shouted 
Rhoda, leading the retreat through the rear of the 
tent. 

Fortunately the girls had not taken off more than 
their outer clothing and their boots. They had no 
cots during this outing, but used sleeping-bags in- 
stead. Seizing such of their possessions as they 

2II 


212 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

could find in the dark, they followed Rhoda out at 
the rear and up the hillside. 

From below the pandemonium of sound of the 
enraged and terrified cattle was all but deafening. 
At the corral the men who had been off watch were 
mounting their ponies. The girls heard Steve’s 
stentorian voice shouting to Hesitation Kane: 

“Can we swing ’em before they clog that cut into 
the other hollow, Hess?’’ 

“Nope !’’ and to the girls’ surprise the horse wran- 
gler snapped out the answer. “Shoot the leaders 
and pile ’em up in the gap. Then swing ’em.’’ 

“Oh, I don’t want to do that,’’ yelled Steve. “The 
boss will have a fit. Who started this thing, any- 
way? That fool boy?” 

“Oh! where is Walter?” gasped Grace. 

But another cowboy from down below shouted : 

“It’s a put up job. I saw somebody start ’em. 
They’ve been stampeded, Steve.” 

The next moment the hullabaloo of the cattle 
themselves made human voices unbearable. A flash 
of lightning showed the front of the herd as it 
charged up the slight rise to the mouth of the cut. 

Ahead of them, riding like mad and using his 
coiled rope to urge his pony, came a single rider. 
Another flash of lightning revealed his identity to 
the girls. 

“Walter! Oh, Walter! He will be killed!” 
shrieked Grace. 



They followed Rhoda out and up the hillside. 

( See page 212 ) 


A 

i 

4 


1 


4 


/ 


f 


1 

.1 

1 

J 

i 


] 

4 

% 



Who Are They? 213 

Nan Sherwood leaped a pace in advance as though 
she would go, afoot as she was, to his rescue. Bess 
covered her face with her hands. Rhoda shouted 
in so ear-piercing a tone that the men at the corral 
heard her: 

“Save himl Don't let him go under, boys! 
Daddy will never forgive you if Walter is hurt.” 

But before she spoke a single rider had left the 
encampment like a missile from a gun. It was 
Hesitation Kane, riding low along his horse’s neck, 
and swinging his big pigtol in his left hand. He 
had taken it upon himself to go against Steve’s or- 
ders. 

A fusillade of shots met the forefront of the 
stampeded cattle just as it seemed Walter Mason 
must be overwhelmed. It was in the narrow cut 
between the two valleys. The leaders went dowm 
in a heap, and against the ridge made by their bod- 
ies the steers directly behind them crashed with an 
impact like two colliding trains 1 

The lightning revealed from moment to moment 
the awful sight. The cattle behind pressed against 
those ahead. The bellowing beasts were smoth- 
ered — were crushed — ^by the score! It seemed to 
the girls and to Walter, who now had gained con- 
trol of his pony and came riding back, as though 
half that herd of mad beasts must be sacrificed. 

But Steve and the other herders saw their chance. 
They swept down on the flank of the herd. The 


214 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

well trained ponies made a living wall against the 
cattle. The latter began to mill — ^that is, turn and 
travel on the herd’s own center. 

Of course, many dropped and were trampled. It 
was a situation that took every ounce of pluck in 
a man’s body to go up against that maddened herd. 
But Steve and his crew did it 

A rider appeared madly from the west “Get 
your guns, boys I” he yelled. “It is a raid ! Greas- 
ers ! I seen ’em start the cattle stampeding 1” 

“You are bringing us stale news, boy,” shouted 
the outfit’s cook. “We’re going after them Greas- 
ers.” 

He and Tom Collins were already astride their 
ponies. Rhoda had got into her boots and now she 
ran and noosed her pony out of the herd, making 
the cast by the light of the electric flashes. She 
saddled, mounted, and was away after the two 
cooks. Walter joined her, followed quickly by 
Nan. Bess had to stay behind with Grace, who 
would never have ventured on such an expedition. 

They charged down the swale toward the west. 
Walter shouted to the others what he had seen at 
the start of the stampede. 

“That is it,” cried Rhoda. “Mexicans! When 
daddy hears about this he will be just about wild.” 

When the little party had swept to the far end 
of the hollow there were no signs of the Mexicans 
who had ridden down into the place to stampede 


Who Are They? 215 

the steers. The rain began to fall; but there was 
not much of that. It was mostly a tempest of 
thunder and lightning. 

The circling cattle swung west finally and came 
down the valley at a less dangerous pace. The 
two cooks, with Rhoda, Nan and Walter, remained 
to meet and turn their front again. By the time the 
cattle had circled the valley twice, they were leg- 
weary and their fears were quenched. 

It was a hard night that followed for all. Half 
the gang had to ride herd until daybreak to make 
sure that the nervous creatures did not start again. 
The other men and ponies dragged the dead beasts 
out of the throat of that gap between the two hol- 
lows. 

More than a hundred were either dead or had to 
be shot. The bodies had to be dragged out of the 
way on the hillsides. Otherwise the steers remain- 
ing could not have been got out of the pasture. 

Rhoda cried. Every carcass dragged out of the 
way meant a decided loss for Rose Ranch. And 
the pity of it 1 

One puncher was sent to the ranch house to re- 
port and ask for a beef wagon to come up. But 
not more than two carcasses could be used by the 
whole ranch force at this time of year. The 
weather was too hot. 

By morning the path was cleared. Steve said ; 

“Get ’em out! Get ’em out as soon as possible. 


2 i 6 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 


Before night the heavens will be black with buz- 
zards and the hills yellow with coyotes. There will 
be some singing around this place for a day or 
two.” 

They drove the exhausted cattle slowly into the 
outer pasture, and from there headed them deeper 
into the hills to a larger valley where the herbage 
was known to be good. 

“I don’t know who them Mexicans were. I don’t 
believe it was the same outfit that the boss and the 
Long Bow crowd chased. They got over the Bor- 
der, I understand,” said Steve. 

Walter and the girls talked this mystery over by 
themselves. It puzzled them vastly. 

They had come up here to hunt for the Mexican 
bandit’s treasure ; and here they had run into a gang 
of outlaws just as bad as the old Lobarto gang 
that had been such a scourge to the country six 
years before. 

“I believe the single Mexican you girls saw at the 
bears’ den belonged to this gang that started the 
cattle stampeding,” Walter declared, 

“It must be true,” agreed Rhoda. 

“Then what shall we do? Don’t you think you 
girls had better go back to the ranch house and 
postpone treasure hunting until the Mexicans are 
rounded up?” 

“And let them find Lobarto’s treasure?” de- 
manded Bess. “Maybe that is what they are after.” 


Who Are They? 217 

“Bess says something sensible, that is sure,” 
Rhoda broke in. “I hate to think of any of those 
mean Mexicans getting the hidden wealth.” 

“Just think of poor Juanita and her mother,” 
Nan said, agreeing with her girl friends. “These 
bad Mexicans will never give back any of the money 
Lobarto stole.” 

“Scarcely!” exclaimed Rhoda. 

“I suppose Walter is speaking for me,” said his 
sister simply. “I know I am timid. But I will 
stick if you other girls do.” 

“Hoorah!” shouted Bess, hugging her. “Why! 
you are getting to be a regular sport. We’ve got 
Tom and Mr. Kane with us, besides Frank, the 
other cowboy. “I am not afraid of the Mexicans 
— ^not much, that is — whether they are Juan Sivello 
and his gang or not.” 

“Hear! Hear!” agreed Nan. “And having 
done so much harm in this neighborhood, perhaps 
they have run away a good many miles to escape 
pursuit. Let us go and take a look in the bears’ 
den, anyway.” 

And so it was agreed. 


CHAPTER XXVir 


THE FUNNEL 

It was not until the last of the cattle had disap- 
peared through the gap between the hollows, and 
the chuck wagon likewise had trundled out of sight, 
that the girls and their party left the encampment 
which had been the scene of the night’s excitement. 

It was not impossible — and even Rhoda men- 
tioned it — ^that they would none of them ever ex- 
perience again so strenuous an eight hours as that 
since the beginning of the stampede. 

The disaster was one that would be long remem- 
bered by the Rose Ranch cowpunchers, as well as 
by the ranch owner himself. A more disastrous 
stampede had seldom been known in that vicinity. 

Already the coyotes were appearing — slip-footed 
and sneaking! They began to gorge on the more 
distant carcasses of the dead cattle before the chuck 
wagon was out of sight. And around and around 
overhead the buzzards circled, dropping at last to 
the ground and pecking at the stiffened carcasses. 
Bald-headed these vultures, with scrofulous look- 
ing necks and unwinking eyes. There was some- 
thing vile looking about these carrion-crows. 
ai8 


The Funnel 


219 


Having no wagon to bother with, Rhoda and her 
party could take almost any direction they wished 
out of the valley. Their tent and camp utensils 
were borne by the pack horse, so they struck into a 
narrow bridlepath over the hills to the southward. 

The three men with the girls and Walter were in 
rather a gloomy mood when they started off. Even 
Tom Collins seemed to have lost his spirits. To 
tell the truth, they were all deeply enough interested 
in the welfare of the ranch to feel depressed be- 
cause of the money loss to Mr. Hammond. 

Rhoda, however, would not allow her visitors to 
be overshadowed by this trouble for long. She 
possessed a good share Qf her father’s cheerfulness 
and dry humor. She began to tell semihumorous 
tales of her own experiences about the ranch and 
on the ranges, and this started Tom and Frank to 
swapping tales — some of them altogether too ridic- 
ulous to be wholly true. 

Only Hesitation Kane remained silent; but that 
made him no different from usual. He even 
grinned cheerfully under the sallies of his com- 
panions. 

About midday the little cavalcade wound around 
a knob of a hill and arrived at the brink of a sheer 
bank, below which was a pocket in the hillside. 
Tom Collins had been guiding them for more than 
an hour, and now he announced this was the place. 
“This here’s it,” he said with confidence. “I 


220 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 


run that black outlaw right up into this here pocket 
and — there he wasn’t!” 

“Oh, Tom!” demanded Rhoda, “are you sure 
this is the spot? A flea couldn’t hide down there.” 

“Honest to pickles 1 I ain’t fooling, Miss 
Rhody,” said the cowpuncher earnestly. “When 
me and my roan come up this fur and seen we 
didn’t see nothin’, I was plumb twisted. Says I to 
me: ‘Here, Tom Collins, is where you got to go 
an’ see a spectacles man ’cause you got optical 
delusions.’ And I sure thought I had.” 

“I’d say nothing could get out of that hole, ’cept 
by the way it run in, ’ceptin’ it had wings,” said 
the other cowpuncher. 

“Or get down into it, either,” Nan Sherwood ob- 
served. 

“Oh, yes. We can get down there. We’ll make 
a path and do that little thing,” Tom rejoined, get- 
ting out of his saddle. 

The banks all around the sink and as far as they 
could see along the gully that led into it, were thirty 
feet or more high, and quite imbroken. At no 
place could they see where the edge of the bank 
had been disturbed. 

Tom got a spade from the pack horse, and Frank 
got a bar. They attacked the edge of the bank 
where, half way down, there was a little slope to 
the wall. The gravelly soil yielded rather easily 
to their digging, and they soon had the beginning of 


The Funnel 221 

a path, down which the hardy ponies would ven- 
ture. 

Hesitation Kane went first, and then the other 
cowboys. The girls from the East were a bit 
timid ; but every pony that descended made the path 
more easy. The animals were so well trained that 
all the riders had to do was to cling on and let their 
mounts have their own way. 

“Now, you see, we’re down here,” said Tom. 
“But there ain’t a pony in this bunch could climb 
up to the top, even by this path we made cornin’ 
down — no, sir! And yet that outlaw done it — or 
something.” 

They started down the gulch, looking for a good 
place to camp for the noon meal. Hesitation still 
led the pack horse, her line being hitched to his sad- 
dle-ring. They all kept a bright lookout on either 
hand for some possible path to the top of the bank 
by which the outlaw horse might have tried to get 
out of the gulch. 

Suddenly Hesitation and his mount and the pack 
horse disappeared. The silent horse wrangler had 
taken to one side of a huge bowlder while the oth- 
ers had passed on the other side. Had the pack 
horse not vented a frightened squeal the rest of 
the party might not have noticed so quickly the ab- 
sence of the two beasts and Mr. Kane, for the lat- 
ter did not utter a sound at first. 

Walter jumped his horse for the place, and then 


222 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

shouted to the others to come. Behind the bowlder 
was only a narrow path between it and a hole — a 
hole at least twenty feet across. 

The sides of this hole were of loose gravel. The 
pack horse had made a misstep and had started to 
slide backwards down the gravel bank. The line 
snubbed to Kane’s saddle was all that saved her 
from going to the bottom. 

The horse wrangler could hold her, but that was 
about all. Frank arrived almost immediately and 
took a cast of his rope around the pack saddle. 
Then the two ponies — his own and Kane’s — 
dragged the pack horse on to firm ground. 

“ ’Nuther slip like that and that old pack mare 
would been in Kingdom Come,” said Tom, peering 
down the funnel-shaped hole. ‘T say ! you can’t see 
the bottom of this here place.” 

“No. That out-thrust of rock hides whatever 
lies at the bottom,” Walter agreed, likewise peering 
down. “Say! couldn’t your outlaw horse have 
tumbled down that place ?” 

“Criminy! do you reckon so?” asked Tom. “He 
might! Looks probable, don’t it?” 

He slid out of his saddle and seized a big chunk 
of rock — all he could lift. He started this sliding 
down the gravelly bank. In a minute it had slid to 
the point where the ledge of rock hid from their 
view the bottom of this sink. Beyond that it dis- 
appeared — and there was no sound of its landing. 


The Funnel 


223 

“Goodness!” cried Nan, who had ridden up to 
look, too. “Is that a bottomless pit?” 

“Might be. Miss,” said Collins. “Anyway, I 
reckon that’s where that ol’ black Satan of an out- 
law went to. Too bad! He must be deader’n a 
doornail down there.” 

The mystery seemed to be explained. But Wal- 
ter was still thoughtful and curious. 

“What’s over this way ?” he asked, pointing to the 
hill east of the gulch. 

“More gullies,” Rhoda said. “And somewhere 
is the bear den we’re going to.” 

“Is it far?” Walter asked. 

“It’s in the gulch right next beyond this one,” 
said Tom Collins, with confidence. 

Walter evidently had something on his mind, but 
he said nothing more. Only Nan noticed his brown 
study. But when she asked him what it was about, 
he only shook his head. 

They stopped for lunch, and then went on down 
the gulch. They were less than a mile, Tom said, 
from the open plain, when the head of the cavalcade 
rounded a turn in the gulch and a figure suddenly 
leaped up from a shady nook — the figure of a man 
who had evidently been asleep there and had not 
heard the cavalcade coming. 

Rhoda, who was ahead, reached for the rifle 
under her knee. Nan was amazed at the action of 


224 Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

the girl of Rose Ranch, for the fellow standing 
before them seemed harmless. 

He was a Mexican. He wore an enormous straw 
sombrero, and there was a good deal of silver cord 
and bangles upon it. He had a sash wound around 
his waist, and into this was thrust a pair of silver- 
mounted pistols. But he did not offer to draw 
them. 

Perhaps he instantly apprehended the fact that 
the girls were well guarded. The cowpunchers and 
Hesitation clattered forward. The Mexican swept 
off his sombrero with much politeness, and bowed 
before the surprised girls. 

“Good-day, Thenoritas,” he said in Spanish. 
“Have I startled you, eh?” 

As he stood up again his left hand rested on the 
butt of one of his pistols. Somehow — ^he did it so 
quickly that it was startling to Nan and her friends 
— Hesitation Kane drew his own pistol and thrust 
it forward. 

“Put ’em up!” he commanded. 

The Mexican seemed to understand just what 
the horse wrangler meant. He slowly, and with 
a deep scowl marring his face, raised his empty 
hands above his head. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


A PRISONER 

“It was just like one of those Western photo- 
plays that sometimes come to the Freeling movie 
palace, and which Mrs. Cupp, the ogress of Lake- 
view Hall, does not approve of, and never will let 
us girls attend if she can help it,” sighed Bess ec- 
statically, later on. 

Bess Harley was especially fond of such dramas. 
And Walter, too, took delight in the imaginative 
if rather crude pictures of the West as it used to be. 

But here was the real thing. Even Nan was 
held breathless by the tense drama. Rhoda’s hints 
and tales of adventure had not altogether prepared 
her visitors for anything like this. 

Hess Kane must have thought that the situation 
called for the sudden and stern action he had taken. 
Of course. Nan Sherwood thought, that snaky- 
looking Mexican was not wearing those two silver- 
mounted pistols in his sash just for ornament. 

Tom Collins slid out of his saddle at a slight ges- 
ture from Kane and went behind the Mexican to 
disarm him. 


225 


226 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

“Keep your hands up,” he said to the fellow. 
“Our wrangler ain’t gifted much with speech, but 
he’s sure a good shot. Where’s the rest of your 
gang?” 

“No understand,” said the fellow sullenly. 

“Mean to say you are alone?” Tom demanded. 

“Si, Sehor.” 

“Where’s your horse?” 

“I am afoot, Senor.” 

“Stop it! Don’t try any of your Mex. jokes. 
You afoot, and with them spurs on your shanks ?” 
and the cowboy pointed to the enormous silver spurs 
on the man’s boots. 

“That’s one of the fellows that stampeded them 
steers last night,” said Frank, with conviction. 

The Mexican looked startled. His black eyes 
shot glances around the group which faced him. 

“Look out that we’re not ambushed,” said Rhoda 
in a low voice. “There may be others around.” 

“We’ll keep our eyes open,” said Tom easily. 
“Guess I’ll tie this fellow’s wrists, just the same.” 

He removed his neckerchief as he spoke. He 
twisted it into a string, and suddenly snatched the 
Mexican’s hands behind him. The fellow exploded 
some objection in his own language, and would have 
fought Tom, but Kane thrust the weapon he held 
forward again and the prisoner subsided. 

Meanwhile Bess excitedly whispered to the other 

girls; 


A Prisoner 227 

“Do you know who I believe he is ? I feel sure 
of it!” 

“Who?” Nan and Grace chorused. 

“That Juan Sivello that Mexican girl wrote to 
Rhoda about.” 

“I had thought of that,” said Rhoda, nodding. 
“It may be.” 

“And if it is,” whispered Bess, thrilling at the 
thought, “he’s got the diagram of the hiding place 
where his uncle put all that treasure.” 

“Goodness me!” sighed Grace, “how rich we 
should all be if we found it.” 

“It surely would be great,” her brother said. 

“And that poor Juanita and her mother would 
get their money back,” Nan added. 

“Risk our Nan for remembering the poor and 
needy,” laughed Bess. 

“There are others to think of besides that Mex- 
ican girl and her mother,” said Rhoda seriously. 
“According to the tales we have heard about Lobar- 
to’s treasure, at least half a dozen families had been 
robbed by him along the Border. And churches, 
too. 

“Some of the haciendas he burned and destroyed 
the people in them. They could claim nothing, of 
course. And he had a lot of other plunder that 
nobody knew who its actual owners were, so the 
story goes.” 

“Poor people!” sighed Nan. 


22 % Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 


“Say! give us a chance to divide a few millions 
among us,” said the reckless Bess. “Who ever 
heard of treasure-seekers who were not made rich 
beyond the dreams of avarice when they found the 
hoard?” 

She had spoken rather loudly. The Mexican 
glanced up at them suddenly and his eyes flashed. 
He muttered something under his little, stringy, 
black mustache. 

“Look out, Bess,” warned Nan. “He heard you 
then.” 

“Well, what of it?” demanded the reckless one. 
“Aren’t the boys going to search him and find that 
map Lobarto made ?” 

“My! but you are a high-handed young lady,” 
chuckled Walter. 

“What we going to do with him, now we’ve got 
him?” asked Tom Collins suddenly. 

“Daddy ought to see him, don’t you think?” said 
Rhoda confidently. 

“Yep,” agreed Hess Kane, returning his pistol 
to its holster. 

“Well, now, I reckon that would be the proper 
caper,” said Tom Collins. “Say, homhre,” he 
added, nudging the Mexican, “where’s your horse ?” 

“I am afoot, I tell you,” was the reply. 

“I can see you are — ^now,” admitted the puncher. 
“But you’ll have a fine walk in those boots to Rose 
Ranch.” 


A Prisoner 


229 


“I will not walk to the Ranchio Rose !” 

“Then you’ll be dragged,” Tom said coolly. “I 
reckon my little roan can do it.” 

“No,” said Kane. “Put him on the pack mare.” 

They were all eager to get the young Mexican 
to Mr. Hammond and see what the shrewd old 
ranchman could make out of him. The saddle and 
goods were removed from the pack animal, and 
cached. For the girls did not intend to give up their 
treasure-hunting trip — by no means! It was only 
postponed. 

“I’d give a good deal to know what became of 
the rest of this Greaser’s gang,” said Frank, the 
other cowpuncher. 

“After they stampeded them steers, maybe they 
run away,” Tom observed. 

They put the prisoner astride the saddleless horse 
and made their way slowly to the ranch house. It 
was almost bedtime when they arrived, and the 
family was much surprised to see them at that hour. 

“Well, I swanny!” ejaculated Mr. Hammond, 
“is this the best you girls could pick up — a Greaser ? 
Do you call him a treasure?” 

The prisoner’s eyes flashed again as he heard this. 
He stood by sourly enough while the girls explained 
more fully to the ranchman. 

“All right! All right!” growled Mr. Hammond. 
“If he is one of those that stampeded the steers, he’ll 
see the inside of the jail. I’d like to catch ’em all.” 


230 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

The visitors made their way to bed as soon as 
they had eaten their late supper; but Rhoda re- 
mained with her father when he questioned the 
Mexican. 

At first the prisoner refused to give any informa- 
tion about himself or his business near Rose Ranch. 
But being an old hand at that game, Mr. Hammond 
finally made him see that it would be wiser for him 
to reply. If he did not wish to get others into 
trouble, he would better try to save himself. 

And it soon appeared that the young Mexican 
did not feel altogether kindly toward the men who 
had come over the Border with him — whoever they 
were. There had been some quarrel, and the others 
had abandoned him, taking even his horse with them 
when they did so. 

“Were you with them when they ran off the Long 
Bow stock?” asked Mr. Hammond. 

“That was not done by us. We separated from 
those thieves of horse-stealers when they would put 
their necks in jeopardy,” the Mexican said in his 
own tongue, which both Mr. Hammond and Rhoda 
understood. 

“So you kept out of that, heh? Then you rode 
up this way?” 

“Into the hills,” said the other sullenly, “The 
country is free.” 

“Not to such as you unless you can give a mighty 
good reason for being over there. You and your 


A Prisoner 


231 


friends have cost me more’n a hundred steers.” 

“Not me!” ejaculated the prisoner, shaking his 
head. 

“No?” 

“I tell you they abandoned me. I do not know 
where they go.” 

“And what were you hanging about that place 
over there in the hills for?” demanded Mr. Ham- 
mond. “Come, now 1 Didn’t you give your friends 
the slip because you wanted to hunt for that old 
hidden treasure?” 

“Senor!” 

“Never mind denying it,” said the ranchman 
sternly. “And I reckon I can make another guess. 
You are Lobarto’s nephew. Your name is Juan 
Sivello. I bet there’s a warrant out for you in the 
sheriff’s office at Osaka right now, my boy.” 

The young Mexican jumped up, startled. Mr. 
Hammond reached out a hand and pushed him back 
into his seat. 

“Sit down, boy. You’d better make a clean 
breast of it. I want to know all you know about 
that old bandit’s hoard, or you’ll go to the sheriff’s 
office with me in the morning. Take your choice.” 


CHAPTER XXIX 


A TAMED OUTLAW 

Rhoda had a great deal to tell her girl friends the 
next morning. She came into their room before 
even Nan was up, and curled down on one of the 
beds to relate to an enormously interested trio all 
the particulars of her father’s interrogation of the 
Mexican prisoner. 

“And is he that Juan What-you-may-call-him?” 
asked Bess. “Truly-ruly?” 

“He is. Daddy made him admit it. And more.” 

“Go on, dear,” said Nan. “You know we are 
just as curious as we can be.” 

“Well, I tell you, girls, it was no easy matter to 
get the truth out of that fellow. But he is scared. 
He fears being handed over to the American sheriff. 
He knows that the men he brought up here have got 
into trouble. They quarreled about the treasure’s 
hiding place. Some of the men had ridden with 
Lobarto himself, and they thought they knew more 
about the treasure than this Juan does.” 

“But the map?” cried Grace. 

“Yes. He’s got it. But it isn’t much of a map. 

232 


A Tamed Outlaw 


233 

Because daddy knows the country so well, he says 
he recognizes the places marked on the diagram.” 

“Oh, bully!” exclaimed Bess Harley. 

“Don’t be so quick,” advised Rhoda. “It is not 
very clear at the best.” 

“Oh ! Oh !” groaned the too exuberant Bess. 

“There are certain places marked on the dia- 
gram. Daddy says the cross Lobarto made where 
the location of the hidden treasure is supposed to 
be, is on a bare hill. It is the hill between that gulch 
where we took refuge from the storm that day, and 
the gully up which Tom Collins says he chased that 
black horse.” 

“On the hill, then? Not in a hole at all?” asked 
Nan. 

“That is what makes daddy doubtful. He says 
to have dug a hole out in the open, on the side or 
the top of that hill, would have been ridiculous. So 
he says he doesn’t believe in it any more than he did 
before.” 

“But can’t we go to look ?” pleaded Grace. 

“Of course we can,” agreed Rhoda. 

“Let’s, then,” Bess said, eagerly. 

“That’s what we will do, Bessie. Daddy says we 
can have the boys again and a pack horse, and can 
grub around all we like. Meanwhile he is going 
to hold on to the Mex. to see what turns up.” 

“And the others? What of them?” asked Nan. 

“Why, we know that a part of his gang went back 


234 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

into Mexico with the stolen horses. Daddy has a 
posse of our own boys hunting the hills for those 
scoundrels that scared Steve’s steers the other night. 
He says — daddy does — that he believes those Mex- 
icans started that stampede just to get the outfit 
away from there. Evidently the gang believed the 
treasure is buried up that way. They haven’t got 
the diagram, you see.” 

“That young Mexican must have been looking 
for the treasure when he came to the mouth of the 
bear den that time and scared us so,” said Nan 
thoughtfully. 

“Yes,” Rhoda agreed. “He says he has been 
scouring the locality.” 

“And no luck?” 

“So he says. But he believes his uncle’s map is 
all right, when once he can understand it.” 

“I declare !” Nan observed, “I don’t see why we 
can’t find the treasure, then, if it is somewhere about 
the hill.” 

“We’ll dig all over it,” said Bess eagerly. 
“Come on, girls! Let’s go to-day,” and she hopped 
out of bed. 

Walter was eager for the second treasure-hunt- 
ing trip, as well. The party got away before mid- 
forenoon and took their dinner at the mouth of the 
gulch in which the bear den was located. 

“I tell you what,” Walter said to Nan privately, 
while they were eating. “That cross on the old 


A Tamed Outlaw 


235 

bandit’s map is between this gulch and that other 
where Tom lost the outlaw.” 

“Yes. So they say, Walter,” Nan replied. 

“Do you know. Nan, I’ve an idea there is a hole 
right through this hill?” said the boy. 

“A hole? You mean that the cavern goes clear 
through ?” 

“Clear through to that funnel-shaped place where 
our pack horse fell down.” 

“Walter! That’s an idea!” admitted Nan. 

“Guess it is,” he returned, smiling. “Let’s get 
them to search the cavern first. We’ve got lanterns 
and a big electric torch. There is one thing I want 
to assure myself about, too,” he added. 

“The treasure, of course.” 

“Something more. I want to know what made 
that noise that frightened you girls so.” 

“Oh, Walter! I had forgotten about that. Why 
remind me?” cried Nan. 

“Well, don’t remind the others, then,” laughed 
Walter. 

Rhoda was quite willing to go to the bear den 
first of all, and the other girls seemed to have for- 
gotten the noise that had so disturbed them when 
they took shelter there from the tornado. 

This time they left the ponies outside, with Frank 
to watch them. Tom and Hess Kane entered the 
cave with the party of young people. 

The place was utterly dark and utterly silent. 


236 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

But they soon lit the lanterns, and Walter went in 
advance with the electric torch. 

The main cavern in which the girls had waited 
for the storm to blow over was of considerable size, 
as they had thought at that time; and the domed 
roof was very high. The hill really was a great 
hollow. 

There were passages into several smaller caves ; 
but these were mere pockets beside the larger apart- 
ment. Wherever there was any appearance of the 
floor of the cavern having been disturbed, the men 
used the spade and bar. But they found no hidden 
treasure. In fact, the floor was mostly of solid 
rock. The old bandit would have found it difficult 
to have buried anything under such flooring. 

It seemed as though they had searched the place 
thoroughly, and all the little chambers, too, when 
Walter’s torch revealed to him a crack in the wall 
at the far end of the cavity, and almost as high as 
his head. He soon called the others to come and 
examine this place. 

“A big bowlder has been rolled into an opening. 
That is what it is,” said Nan. 

“Just what I was saying to myself,” Walter con- 
fessed. “And I believe nature did not roll the rock 
here, either.” 

“Think somebody shut the door on a passage, do 
you?” asked Tom Collins, curiously. “Bring along 
the bar, Hess, and let’s see.” 


A Tamed Outlaw 


237 

“If nature did not wedge that rock into the open- 
ing, then whoever did it did an excellent job!” 
growled Walter, after working on the bowlder for a 
couple of hours. 

“It’s started. Yes, it’s started,” said Tom com- 
plainingly. “But you can’t say much more about 
it and speak the truth. If that old Mexican’s 
treasure ain’t behind that rock, then it ought to be, 
that’s sure!” 

Supper time came, and they were still working 
at the bowlder. It was agreed to camp in the cav- 
ern for the night, and continue working at the 
wedged rock until bedtime. 

“And might as well bring the ponies in and 
hobble ’em, eh?” suggested Tom Collins. “No use 
standing watch on ’em outside. They’ve grazed 
themselves full this afternoon.” 

It was so agreed. Hess went out and helped 
Frank bring in the animals and wood for the cook- 
ing fire. 

But here was a surprise. Almost as soon as the 
horses clattered in on the hard floor of the cavern 
one of them whinnied. Seemingly in response, the 
reechoing sound that had previously so startled the 
girls rang faintly through the cavern. But from 
much farther away, it seemed, than before. 

“The haunt !” gasped Bess. “There it is again.” 

The men and Walter looked inquiringly at each 
other. Tom Collins shook his head: 


238 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

“Can it be the echo of that little roan of mine 
squealing?” 

“Never!” cried Rhoda. “That doesn’t sound 
like any horse I ever heard. Why, it’s queer I” 

“Queer’s the word; but horse queer,” muttered 
Tom. 

Walter looked eagerly at Nan in the lamplight. 

“Do you believe that black horse is somewhere 
here?” she whispered. 

“I most certainly do, Nan,” he said with con- 
fidence. 

They worked all the evening on that stone. Oc- 
casionally the faint and mysterious sound floated to 
them. The men would not give their opinion about 
this, but they were warmly expressive of what they 
thought about the bowlder that had to be moved. 

They rolled up in their blankets and sleeping bags 
finally, and left the rest of the job until morning. 
Without proper tools to attack the bowlder it was a 
slow and back-breaking task. 

In the morning, however, while Tom Collins 
was getting breakfast and Frank drove the ponies 
out to graze, Walter and Hess tackled the bowlder 
again. It seemed that at night, when they left the 
work, they had been just on the verge of prying it 
loose. 

Suddenly it heaved over. It was rounded on the 
front, so once having turned it, it was an easy 
matter to get it out of the way. The lantern light 


A Tamed Outlaw 


239 

showed that there was a passage behind the fallen 
barrier. 

The girls came running at the crash and at Wal- 
ter’s cry. The boy had grabbed up the torch and 
pressed the switch. He shot the round ray of the 
lamp into the dark passage. 

“Oh! There is no treasure there!” murmured 
Bess, in disappointment. 

Walter ventured in, the others crowding after 
him. The passage was long and crooked. They 
traveled at least a hundred yards, the roof of the 
tunnel being nowhere more than ten feet in height. 

Suddenly there was a sound in front. Some- 
thing scrambled over the rocks. Walter shut off 
the lamp and they saw daylight ahead of them. 

“See here! Here he is!” shouted the boy, hur- 
rying on. “What did I tell you?” 

There was more scrambling of hoofs, and then a 
shrill squeal — surely the noise made by a horse! 
Hess and the girls following, Walter came to the 
circular place to which the tunnel led. They all 
saw what Walter saw. For once Hesitation Kane 
was surprised into expressing himself suddenly : 

“It’s the black outlaw or I’m a dodo!” 


CHAPTER XXX 


TREASURE-TROVE 

Hesitation Kane was not a dodo, for nobody 
could deny that the trembling and snorting creature 
standing on the other side of this open hole was the 
beautiful wild stallion that had followed the range 
horses down from the hills more than a week before. 

But such a pitiful looking creature as he was 
now ! The girls expressed their pity for him with- 
out stint. Not that he was marred, or seriously 
injured in any way. But he was so weak from 
hunger that he could scarcely stand. 

It was plain that a few shrubs and some bunch 
grass had grown in the bottom of this hole. He 
had eaten them down to the very roots, and then 
dug the roots up with his hoofs and chewed them. 

Tom Collins’ story of how he had chased the 
stallion and the creature had so suddenly disap- 
peared, was now explained. The horse had slipped 
into the hole in the gulch above, just as the pack 
horse had. Only the wild horse had slid clear to 
the bottom of the funnel-shaped hole. 

The outcropping ledge hid this opening which 
240 


Treasure-Trove 


241 


was at the level of the caves. Nobody could see the 
imprisoned horse from above. That, the searching 
party well knew. 

“And to think that he might have starved to 
death here,” murmured Grace. 

“Can you get him and tame him, Mr. Kane?” 
asked Bess Harley. 

“But he should be Walter’s horse,” put in Nan 
Sherwood, earnestly. “Walter has felt all the time 
that he was here and that it was he that made the 
noise that scared us so.” 

“Of course this is the source of that cry we 
heard,” Rhoda admitted. “When we led the ponies 
into the big cave that day, he heard them, and they 
knew he was here. I believe I haven’t much sense, 
girls, after all. I should have known it was an- 
other horse squealing.” 

“I was sure of it last night,” said Walter, “when 
he squealed after Frank drove in the stock.” 

“Well, daddy is fair,” Rhoda declared. “When 
he learns all about it he will decide who is to have 
the horse. Of course, he was originally the prop- 
erty of the Long Bow Ranch and that brand is on 
him now. But daddy will fix it right.” 

“Say !” suddenly cried Bess, “did this party start 
out from Rose Ranch to hunt wild horses? I — 
should — say — not! We are after treasure ” 

“Oh, girls, see here!” interrupted Grace Mason 
suddenly. “What do you suppose this can be?” 


242 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

While the horse wrangler went for a rope to use 
in holding and leading the wild horse, Grace had 
gone back a way into the tunnel. Here the floor 
of the cavity was not of rock. It was plain to be 
seen by the light of the lantern that the horse had 
stood in here and stamped and dug the dirt up with 
his sharp hoofs. 

In a hole that he had thus excavated Grace had 
seen an object that glistened in the lamplight. “See 
here,” she repeated. “What do you suppose this 
can be?” 

Walter was too busy watching the horse to attend 
to her. But the other girls came. Nan dropped 
down on her knees beside the smaller girl. Almost 
immediately she cried out: 

“It is! Oh! Look!” 

“Good,” said Bess, crowding closer. “I don’t 
know what it is, but I am looking. Mercy me, Nan 
Sherwood ! what is that ?” 

“A silver candlestick,” said Nan in a hushed tone. 
“Girls, we have found the Mexican treasure !” 

Breakfast was entirely forgotten after that. The 
coffee boiled over back in the big cave, and when 
Tom thought of it, there was only a little extract 
of Mocha in the bottom of the burned-black pot! 

They brought the spades into play again. They 
unearthed a cavity in the floor of the passage into 
which had been heaped haphazard a mass of silver 
and gold ornaments, yases, bags of jewelry, church 


Treasure-Trove 


243 


plate, and of money in quantity to make them all go 
half mad with delight. Such a treasure-trove none 
of them had really believed existed. 

They were hours in becoming calm enough to 
decide what should be done. Then Frank was sent 
off on the swiftest pony to the ranch house to report 
to Rhoda’s father, and to bring back a wagon in 
which to carry away the heavier ornaments and 
vessels that Lobarto had stolen from the churches 
in his own country. How the bandit had ever 
brought such a weight of treasure so far was a 
mystery. 

“And there’s another thing,” Bess Harley said, 
later. “Why did he make that cross on the map 
which he sent to his relations, pointing to a cache 
on the hillside?” 

“He didn’t,” Rhoda rejoined quickly. “He made 
the mark all right. He meant to show that it was 
under the hill.” 

“Of course !” agreed Nan. 

The Mexican treasure was bound to make Mr. 
Hammond a lot of bother, as he said. For when 
news went abroad that it was found, dozens of 
people came to Rose Ranch trying to prove that 
some of it belonged to them. 

Many of these claimants were impostors, and the 
ranchman referred them to the courts which, under 
the circumstances, could do very little toward 
straightening out the tangle of ownership. 


244 Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

In the first place, the cavern where the wealth 
was found chanced to be on land to which Mr. 
Hammond held the title. Mr. Hammond tried to 
return the church treasure and vestments; but two 
of the churches Lobar to had wrecked had never 
been rebuilt, and the priests were scattered. 

The same way with the coined money. The rob- 
ber had gathered such coin as he had stolen and put 
it in sacks. Unless a claimant could prove how 
much money, and just what form of money, was 
stolen from him, Mr. Hammond saw no reason for 
handing out the recovered treasure. 

Juanita O’Harra and her mother were treated as 
generously as it was possible. And they were satis- 
fied with Mr. Hammond’s judgment. In fact, most 
of those who really had lost property were too 
thankful to have a generous amount returned to 
quarrel about the ranchman’s decision. 

Mr. Hammond claimed that the party searching 
and finding the cache had certain rights. The girls, 
Walter, and the three employees of the ranch on the 
spot when the find was made, all shared in the 
treasure-trove. 

There was one person who had been hungry for 
the treasure who did not get a dollar of it. That 
was the young Mexican, Juan Sivello, Lobarto’s 
nephew. As Mr. Hammond said, chuckling: 

“All that chap took away from Rose Ranch was 
a flea in his ear!” 


Treasure-Trove 


245 

The letters that went back East after the finding 
of the Mexican treasure — both to the home folks 
and to girl chums — were so long and so exciting 
that one might have doubted if the four girls from 
Lakeview Hall were quite sane. The visitors to 
Rose Ranch enjoyed many adventures before they 
started East again, and they had at the end much 
more to tell their friends. But nothing so exciting 
as the result of the treasure hunt. 

Walter Mason, too, had an additional prize. Mr. 
Hammond did not think that the recovered black 
horse was a fit mount for a boy ; but he shipped to 
Chicago two ponies, for Walter’s and his sister’s 
use, in exchange for any rights the boy might think 
he had in the outlaw. 

Nan and Bess had no means of keeping horses 
at home if they owned them; so when they left Rose 
Ranch they bade their pretty steeds good-by — per- 
haps with a few secret tears. For the little beasts 
had carried them for many miles, and safely, over 
the ranges. 

Life at Rose Ranch never lacked variety, it 
seemed. Never again would the Eastern girls pity 
Rhoda Hammond because of her home life, and 
wonder if she did not miss much that they con- 
sidered necessary to their happiness and comfort. 

“I guess everything has its compensations,” said 
Nan, using a rather long word for her. “I thought 
my uncle and aunt and cousins up in the Michigan 


246 Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch 

woods must be awfully lonely, and all that. But 
I found it wasn’t so.” 

“And down here nobody has a minute to spare. 
You can’t even feel lazy yourself,” agreed Bess. “I 
feel right on edge all the time, expecting something 
new and wonderful to happen.” 

“And doesn’t it?” asked Nan, laughing. 

“I should say it- did! Why, I never realized 
so much could happen in a month as happens on 
Rose Ranch in a single day,” agreed her enthusiastic 
chum. “I wish I had been brought up on a ranch 
like Rhoda.” 

“Oh,” said Nan Sherwood, “I don’t wish that. 
There is only one place in which to be born and 
brought up. That’s in the little cottage in amity, 
and with Momsey and Papa Sherwood.” 


THE END 






f 

I • 




'•I ^ 

-w'. 










'■ '■ ■•* ;•<• • J'.Vav' V-'V'> h’i- • ■'• ■•' 

'%'* . ' ; < - - ‘ . : v'' 

. ■.'.'■■I,. '• r»V'../*,'T^’:v <• ' ^ > ;■■•’• 1' • • 




*.■■;* r'> ■’, .■ • *’•■■•••. 




S • ■ \ 


.'I S 

' ' ( 


■ f 


- y • 

‘ ' p ' 


% 


♦ 


t 


i 


/ 



i 


















V,'’ "■> 

ov “ ^ 

° %> ''i^ " 


v>? » 







° - 




vS) Q 



9 K 



■^ > «^ ^ ^n c^ o 

a 



o o'’ ° /K 

^■N x'^ sT ^ ’ '* ^ 

s 0 ’ N^"?-*' ^ '^■^' * ' 

v' .,0^ .^'V'/, 


C^ 1 

0 ^ 



' a'^’ <■. .a 

.0' c 0 ‘A. <?. “■' , 

0 ^ ,-,S>«N<v ^ ^ v'^ 

a 



'c\ ' V' ^ ^ ^ , 

” $ <i 


a‘^ .'UnL'"' % 



■a V V V ' 

. "V ^ ® ^ ^ 0 N c .16 ^ oW-^ ' 4O' 




"^L ‘■^TTp' ,0^ #'' 

^ ^ ^ ^ r. a . 




<. ■<< 




cr> 




'* <x 
V ^ 

Af. A‘^\''''« '^O "-f "^<5:- V\ 

« ^ ^ a 00' 




,0^ %. ‘'yy.o'' , 0 '^ '^b 'i 



/ > " ' ' o'^ S ■• • “ ' 4 ^^' * 3 N 0 ’ . \'^’^ » 

^Wa^. - ''"■ ' -'^ ■ ' 


A 




